


Wall Yourself Away

by todisturbtheuniverse



Series: Into the Storm and Rout [19]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Begging, F/M, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Oral Sex, Pining, Rope Bondage, Trust Issues, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-08-24 11:26:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8370427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: The Iron Bull is not the only person with secrets; the Inquisitor has her fair share, kept safe inside a fearful, guarded heart. When a letter from an old friend arrives at Skyhold, it threatens everything the Inquisitor believes about herself—her relationship with Bull, most of all. How much does another person ever know us? Only as much as we let them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rating due to trauma endured in the Circle, plus allusions to sex and BDSM. Post- _Here Lies The Abyss_ , leading up to _Tough Love._ Citing excuses for this fic: 1) I have a lot of headcanons about Katrina's backstory and have barely touched any of them in fic, 2) I just...love...pining, and 3) two people, guarded in their own ways, finally learning to be vulnerable. Holy shit, that is my kink.
> 
> Also, look, you can pry my headcanon that Inquisition takes 1.5-2 years from Conclave to Corypheus’s death from my cold, dead hands. :P
> 
> This likely doesn't work as a stand-alone fic; it's somewhat specific to a Circle mage Inquisitor, and previous fic in the series is occasionally referenced.

**Solace 9:42**

Katrina wakes to someone knocking—nay, _pounding_ —on the locked door at the bottom of her stairs. "Inquisitor!" a voice she doesn't recognize shouts. "Inquisitor, I'm sorry to disturb you—"

She bolts upright. If there is one thing she's learned since the Conclave, it's that good news doesn't come at odd hours, battered against her door. She opens her mouth to call back, to ask them to wait, when a big hand closes over her mouth.

For a split second, she almost reaches for her magic, but then—half-asleep though she is—she recognizes the hand and the person attached to it: Bull, right beside her, the other hand to his mouth, a finger to his lips.

She nods; he pulls his hand away. Clad in absolutely nothing, he slides out of bed—quieter than someone of his size should rightfully be capable of—and picks up his axe from the rack that holds his gear. Creeping is beyond her, especially this soon after waking up, so she stretches out with her power, down the stairs and out the door. She waves to get Bull's attention and holds up a finger: there is just one person on the other side of the door, male by the sound of his voice, elven by the vague size of him she can sense.

Bull nods and starts down the stairs. She waits, muscles tense; from where she sits in bed, she can drop lightning on the visitor as soon as the exchange goes south, but she'll have to wait for Bull's assessment first. She starts to gather up the static in the air around her, just in case.

The pounding is suddenly cut off, punctuated by the creak of her door swinging open. In a split second, she already knows there is no threat. The man at the door staggers back a full six feet at the sight of Bull. Not exactly the temperament for an assassin.

"This had better be important," Bull's voice growls.

"It is!" the runner squeaks. Katrina pictures the sight that's greeted him—seven feet (not counting horns) of angry, muscled qunari, naked and wielding an axe—and has to clasp a hand over her mouth to keep her laughter from spilling out. "Nightingale, she said a message has come, and the Inquisitor should have it right away—"

"Give it," Bull says.

"Begging your pardon, The Iron Bull, ser, but she said to give it to the Inquisitor _specifically_ —"

Katrina gets out of bed, wrapping a sheet around herself, and goes to the wall that tops the stairs, poking her head over it. "Give it to Bull, please," she calls down, trying not to laugh, and also trying to inject as much dignity as possible into her voice when her hair is a veritable haystack.

"Yes, Your Worship, right away, Your Worship," the runner says, and approaches slowly to put the tightly-bound scroll in Bull's hand before dashing away.

Bull shuts the door, hefting his axe over his shoulder. Katrina backs up to the bed, laughing full-force now; Bull's grinning as he emerges from the top of the stairs.

"I think you nearly gave the poor man a heart attack," she says, still chuckling.

"Better him than you," he says, dropping the scroll on the bed. "It is important, though." He points out the mark stamped into the wax seal; the characters in cipher around the outer edge dictate that the message is personal, urgent, and a reply is expected.

Frowning, Katrina slits open the missive. "Personal? That's odd. I thought my family had already gotten everything they wanted out of me."

Bull snorts. "Gotta send a clearer message for nobles to leave you alone."

"If you have a suggestion, I'm all ears," she says, peeling apart the papers. The first merely contains the standard message of approval Leliana and her people leave on all incoming mail, certifying that it isn't dangerous. "They have a hard time hearing the word _no_."

He makes a vague noise of agreement.

"They probably just want money, or something," she mutters, flattening the vellum out to better read it, "bunch of bloody vipers—"

But the words trail off, out of her mouth and gone, when she recognizes the handwriting: a little clumsy, and in code, but as familiar to her as her own. It takes only a few hurried heartbeats to place it, and then she gasps; Bull is at her side in an instant, putting down his axe.

"What is it?"

The pages rattle, and she realizes her hands are shaking. She shifts close enough to him so that he can read along with her and drinks in the words at a dead sprint.

_Dear Kat,_

_I hope this finds you. I've heard some incredible rumors, half of which I didn't believe until that damn hole in the sky closed right up. I was trying to get to Haven when I heard it'd been buried, but all the news says you've found a new stronghold, so you must have lived. I hope you lived._

_I'm with a group of about a dozen of our folk. Some of the lucky ones who turned tail and ran out of Kirkwall in Hawke's wake. Woman's good for causing a distraction. Didn't want to write you when it happened and put you at risk, too. We've survived, but with all the shit roving around out here now—demons, Red Templars, Maker knows what else—we're suffering. Heard some more of our people are living in the Inquisition, free. Think we could join up?_

_I'll stay near the inn south of Lydes as long as I can. Write back soon._

_Love from Piper_

He finishes reading about the same time she does; she looks up at him, her knuckles white on the vellum, a trembling smile stretched across her face, expecting him to share her disbelieving joy, and he asks, "Who's Piper?"

She blinks at him, stupefied, her stomach churning, and realizes that never—in all the months they've fought together, slept together, shared tents and meals and the kind of shitty, life-changing experience that grinds you up and leaves your bones mashed as potatoes—never has she said the name of her best friend, not to him, not out loud. Never.

She feels the smile drain from her face and ducks her head, touching the old, familiar handwriting. "She's a ghost," she says, "or maybe a miracle. I don't know which."

He waits for her to go on, watching her. She wishes he would just guess it, the way he's good at. That would save her from leaving any cracks between her words for him to wiggle through, to see the heart of her. It's one thing to daydream romantic notions, a future where Corypheus is smoldering ash and Bull stays with her, where he _knows_ her, but it's another to let him see enough of her to throw it back in her face.

Not that he'd be cruel. Well, usually, she doesn't think he'd be cruel. Probably let her down easy, remind her again that qunari don't have sex for love. Missive received. In worse moments, though, scenarios that cut far more deeply than that cross her mind: that he's still reporting to the Qun, that the Storm Coast was all an act to get deeper in her trust.

She looks up at him again, and it's one thing to tell herself she's imagining the worry in his face and another to actually believe it. She's so tangled up in the pretending they do that she's not sure where it ends and the truth begins.

"She was my friend," she says at last, as stoically as she can. She knows it's about as effective as a big rock rolled over a cave entrance and a sign that proclaims _Do Not Enter_ ; she doesn't have the finesse to deflect with a lie, and he'll know immediately that there's something she's hiding. "At Ostwick. She was transferred to Kirkwall in 9:36. With everything that happened there, I thought she was dead, or Tranquil. Guess not." She gets to her feet, tucking the sheet tight around her. "I have to answer this. Sorry—you can go back to sleep, if you want."

She walks across the cold room to stoke up the fire, but even though the flames slowly turn orange and come to life, it doesn't stop her shivering.

"You've never talked about the Circle," he says, far behind her. "In passing, sure, but I didn't know you had friends there."

She squeezes her eyes shut, keeping her back to him, and takes a steadying breath before she answers. "Just the one." She doesn't sound quite right, but also not as wrong as she feels. Piper's face floats in her mind's eye, her rakish grin, her pointed chin, her sparkling brown eyes. _Alive_ , she thinks, even though her head tells her it could be a trap, it could be a lie, it could be everything bad and evil, but her heart just repeats, _alive_ , over and over in unrelenting, uncomprehending joy _._

She goes to her desk. "It's not the kind of place where you get close to anybody," she says, trying to sound dismissive. "I'm sure you've heard the stories."

She pulls over a stack of vellum, even though her hands are still trembling, and she'd have a hard time spelling her own name right now, let alone writing an adequate reply to this. She stands there, bent over the desk, staring sightlessly down at the quill in her hand and possessed by the beat of her own heart, wordless.

She's so lost in the dizzying spiral of her thoughts that she doesn't hear Bull come up behind her, doesn't know he's there until his hands come down on her shoulders. She jumps.

"You don't want to talk about it," he says, "just say so."

"It's not that." She says it too quickly, as if hoping to reassure him, as if he'd _want_ to hear about this and she's depriving him of it.

She does want to tell him, literally every mundane and stupid thing about herself, and hear all his in turn, but she didn't ever imagine actually saying the words would be this difficult. Nothing ever is, in a daydream. She hasn't said Piper's name in more than five years. She hadn't realized the power words collect when they're left by themselves.

His thumbs dig a bit into her back, on either side of her spine, and circle; a little of the tension goes out of her.

"I thought she was dead," she says again, and more emotion leaks out this time, scared and hopeful and wounded all at once, old pain stirred up. "Dead, or worse. I'd known her since I was a child, and then they sent her to Kirkwall, and everyone knows…" Her eyes sting, and she hastily wipes beneath them with her fingers. "I can't help but think this is a trap. A trick of some kind. I don't want it to be. I missed her so much."

He pulls her back against him, arms coming to rest around her, and she lets him, taking the comfort. For a long moment, he doesn't say anything, but she can feel him thinking, considering.

"I had a friend like that," he says. "His name was Vasaad. Knew each other as kids. We were in Seheron together."

She's listening so hard that she barely breathes. It's not every day she talks about the Circle; it's not every day he talks about Seheron, either, especially now that the Qun has cut him loose. She wonders if it's easier to say it when they aren't looking at one another.

"My last mission there." There's something new in his voice that she can't quite place, nothing she's heard before. Almost...rough, the way he sounds when he's been knocked down in a fight. "Told him to wait, he went through the door. Arrow in the throat. I lost my mind. Slaughtered everyone in the place. Turned myself over to the re-educators when it was over. If he came back from the dead, you can bet I'd be suspicious. I'd still want a look at him, though. I'd still have to see."

She knows better than to tell him she's sorry, but she brings her arms up to tangle around his. They stand like that for a while, her back to his chest, until her heartbeat slows again.

"I have to know," she whispers. "If she's in Lydes, that's not so far. We could make it in a week."

"One of Red's birds will be faster. Bring her to us, where she won't be a threat to you if she's not who you hope she is."

She sees the wisdom of this, even if she'd rather not. Reluctantly, she nods. "I'd better write this, then, and get it to Leliana."

His arms tighten momentarily around her, and then he lets her go. "Dictate to me. You're going to blot the ink, you're shaking so hard." He sits down at her desk, and her chair creaks ominously.

She can't help but smile—watery and thin, maybe, but still there. "Thanks, Bull."

Even sitting, he doesn't have to tip his head back much to look at her. "Frontline bodyguard, rope expert, letter-writer—I'm your man."

She laughs, but her stomach clenches. He sets up the papers and ink pot the way he likes, and she looks up at the loft above her bed, where a locked chest sits in shadow, a dragon's tooth split in two hidden safely inside. It seems folly to her now, that flurry of warm affection that brought her to have it made a few weeks ago. Hasn't she learned already that love only burns until nothing remains? Didn't Piper teach her that?

Isn't what she has already with Bull—an ally, a bedmate, a friend—better than nothing at all?


	2. Chapter 2

**Harvestmere 9:22**

"Please," Katrina whispered to the mouse, "please, keep quiet."

It couldn't understand her, of course, and the creature looked up at her with gleaming dark eyes, squeaking softly. At least it had stayed in the nest she'd made for it from scraps and rags, hidden away from the tower's many cats behind a loose brick in the wall of the chantry. The mouse had the run of the hideaway behind that brick, and enough air coming in through the gaps around it to breathe.

"We need to get you out of here," she told it, and worried her lip as she tried to think of how to do it. The Enchanters liked her well enough, but she'd only been in the Circle a year, and didn't have permission to go out into the garden unsupervised. She liked Enchanter Lydia very much, but thought she'd be somewhat pragmatic about the issue of mice in the tower: that was what the mousers were for.

She fed it a slice of apple she'd swiped from the table at midday while she tried to puzzle it out, brow furrowed. She could try a window on the ground floor and hope that it would find its way down—

"What're you doing?"

She jumped and spun, so quickly that she lost her balance, toppled from her knees and sprawled down on the floor. The girl who'd crept up behind her bent down to look at her, grinning. She had a pointed little chin and unusually lively brown eyes, her ash-blond hair scraped into a haphazard braid. Katrina had only seen her once or twice; she was very new to the Circle.

"Nothing," Katrina stammered, pushing herself back up to her knees and dusting off her robes. "Just, uh, playing." She shuffled sideways an inch or so to conceal the hole where the mouse was hidden; there were a few little squeaks from behind her.

"I won't tell," the girl said, still smiling.

"It's really nothing," Katrina said, casting around wildly for a likely story. "I was just talking. To my...pet. My imaginary pet."

The girl pointed down near Katrina's knee. "Or your actual pet?"

Katrina looked down. The mouse had crept out and around her leg; it stood up a bit on its hind legs, forefeet braced on her thigh, and chattered at the intruder.

"It's not a pet," Katrina said, defeated. "I just...found it. I didn't want the cats to get it. I found another one dead last week."

The girl knelt down on the floor with her. "So what are you going to do?"

This matter-of-fact question took Katrina by surprise; if any other apprentice had found her, they'd already be running off to the Enchanters to tell.

"I was trying to figure out a way to get it outside," she admitted, feeding the mouse another slice of apple to stop its squeaking; it munched contentedly. "But I'm not allowed out on my own yet."

Squinting, the girl surveyed Katrina. "Seems to me like the mouse is small, and the pockets in those robes must be huge."

The heat of a blush crept up Katrina's neck and into her cheeks. She'd gone through her last set of robes in six months, she was growing so quickly; when their seams had torn beyond repair, she'd had a new set thrust upon her, far too big for her and unlikely to tear unless she stepped on the overlong hem. She furtively wished for her old, comfortable clothes—dresses that fit just right and the elegant trousers she'd worn to ride her horse—and just as quickly slapped the wish away.

Those things were not hers anymore. She was not a promising rider, and she would not do credit to her family when she was married off to some lord, as capable of protecting her home as she was of decorating it; no, she was just a Circle apprentice now, too tall and with shapeless robes.

Katrina tried to muster her thoughts. "She squeaks," she pointed out. "Whoever agrees to take me out will know—"

"Just give her some food, and she'll keep quiet long enough." Tentatively, the girl reached out to pet the mouse's soft brown fur with a single finger. It didn't argue with this treatment. "How long have you been feeding her?"

"About a week," Katrina admitted. "I can't keep stealing from the table, though. I'm not good at it."

"I can help you there," the girl said, looking up with a grin. "I've got three brothers. Had to be fast and sneaky to get food before it ran out."

Katrina sat back on her haunches, frowning. "Why d'you want to help me? You don't know me."

It was as if she'd struck the girl; she rocked back, obviously stung. "Just trying to make friends," she huffed. "Seeing as I'm new here, and all, but if you don't want help—"

She started to get up, but Katrina grabbed the sleeve of her robe and tugged her back down. "I do want help. I just...no one's wanted to be my friend here."

The girl tilted her head to the side, confused now. "Why?"

"Because I was a noble, I guess." She couldn't make it sound like this didn't hurt her; she'd been friends with plenty of folk, after all, the cook's children and the hostler and the hunter's sister. "They think I must get special treatment."

"Do you?"

"Only because I keep my head down and do what the Enchanters say."

The girl laughed, but quietly, her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. Katrina gave a tentative smile.

"So when are you going to try this?" the girl asked.

"Tomorrow, I think." Gently, she scooped the mouse up and deposited it back in its makeshift nest, along with the rest of the bread and apple she'd stolen; she carefully resettled the brick in its hole. "I've seen one of the cats sniffing around in here the last few days."

The girl nodded. "You can say you want to show me the garden. I haven't seen it yet. And I can make some kind of distraction if the mouse makes noise."

"Alright," Katrina agreed, though hesitantly. "I hope that'll work."

"I'm good at distractions." She pushed to her feet, dusting off the knees of her robes, and offered a hand down to help Katrina up. "What's your name, anyway?"

She took the hand. "Katrina."

The girl hauled her up, surprisingly strong for her size. "I'm Piper. Come on. Supper's soon. You can tell me all about how things are supposed to go around here."

She took off, half-trotting for the door, leaving a bemused Katrina to follow along behind her.

* * *

**Solace 9:42**

As dawn breaks, Katrina and Bull part ways: she to the rookery, and he to the practice yard. At the bottom of all the long stairs leading down to the keep, as she braces herself and straightens her collar to hide the stray marks of any teeth that might linger around her neck, he puts his hands on her shoulders.

She looks up at him, the scroll clasped tightly in her hand, and his thumb moves to adjust her collar a last little bit. These are the moments that she thinks over the hardest, in those rare times when she's alone, no Bull to distract her or advisers to talk her ear off: these are the things she'd always thought only lovers do, but as far as she knows, they are not lovers.

He bends enough to brush a kiss across her forehead, and she closes her eyes. He doesn't give her any platitudes, doesn't say _it will be fine_ or _don't worry_ or any of the nonsense people spout when they really have no idea _what_ it will be.

"We'll figure this out," he tells her instead, squeezing her shoulders, and this is better than all of those other things.

She gives a weak smile; his hands fall from her shoulders. This first moment of emptiness yawning between them before they step back into the world outside is always the hardest, and she thinks it's probably not easy for him, either, regardless of whether he feels anything more than cursory affection for her. Kat and Bull no longer, but Inquisitor and Tal-Vashoth, they go through the door and away from one another. Katrina has gotten better at not watching as he walks away.

This early, there is hardly anyone to see them emerge from her quarters together, but the few servants who are up and about do give them a curious glance or two; it is one thing to hear the rumors, which have by now seeped into the very stone of Skyhold, and another to see the curious pair they make in broad daylight. Katrina ignores the looks and crosses the keep to the next set of stairs, lightheaded with tiredness as she climbs.

"Oh, good," a voice calls out as she emerges into the highest room, breathing a bit harder than usual. "I thought you'd come straight here, but I wasn't sure—"

Josephine abandons the tea she's sharing with Leliana and comes straight for Katrina, her face creased with worry. "What news? What is it?"

Katrina glances over her shoulder at her spymaster, still sitting at the table with its few burning candles. "You didn't…?"

Leliana sets down her tea. "I would not share your personal business with anyone, even Josie."

By all indications, she takes no offense at Katrina's accusation, and Katrina feels a little tug of guilt; she usually takes care not to treat her spymaster with suspicion, but the exhaustion and shock have worn away at all her careful social considerations.

Josephine reaches out to grasp her hand, pulling Katrina's attention away from Leliana. "I only heard by chance," she said. "The runner got turned around in my office."

Katrina manages a feeble smile. "We've talked about you working before the sun comes up, I think."

Josephine gives her a smile in return, more convincing, but still shadowed. "There is much work to be done." There's a moment of hesitation while she peers into Katrina's face, but then she presses on. "I don't want to pry—"

"Please. I've pried into enough business of yours; this is, apparently, my comeuppance." She holds up the scroll and catches Leliana's eye. "This needs to go to Lydes, with the fastest bird you have."

Leliana rises immediately to start her path through her rookery, looking for the most well-rested raven.

"An old friend has asked for help," Katrina tells Josephine. "Until an hour ago, I believed she'd died in Kirkwall."

She does her best to make the words blunt, unfeeling, but she's sure that the mingled grief and hope still show on her face.

"A mage," Josephine guesses.

"Yes. And a dozen with her."

Josephine takes her arm and pulls her over to the table. "Have some tea, and sit down. You look dead on your feet."

Katrina allows herself to be directed; she thinks, a little numbly, that it feels like those early days in Haven, always looking to Josephine or Cassandra to determine what she should do, how she should act. What a relief it is, to fall back into those motions, as if she has discarded the mantle of Inquisitor.

Josephine pours her a cup of tea while she says, "It could be a trap, a trick, any horrible thing. I haven't heard from her since she was transferred out of Ostwick. That's not unusual in itself, it was difficult at best to get messages into and out of a Circle, but…"

"You're right to be suspicious," Leliana says, coming back with a raven perched on her shoulder. "You have enemies, Inquisitor, plenty of them."

"It was her handwriting," Katrina mutters, while Josephine stirs a dollop of honey into her tea and pushes it toward her, still watching her face with avid concern. She takes it and drinks, more to have something to do with her hands than out of thirst, but it does at least warm her. Some feeling comes back into her fingertips.

"Difficult but not impossible to imitate." Leliana stretches out a hand for the scroll, but Katrina covers it with a hand.

"Wait. They want to come to Skyhold."

Neither of them protest this, and it gives her a brief surge of relief. "If she is truly your friend," Josephine says, "then, of course, she should come. And if not…"

"Better that the confrontation is here," Leliana finishes. "Where the danger is less."

Katrina's fingers curl around the scroll. "That's just what Bull said."

"Well." Leliana's mouth curls. "He _was_ a spy."

She says it like a recommendation, with respect, but it forms a pit in Katrina's stomach that she can't look closely at lest it swallow her whole.

"I don't see the difference between my going to meet this party and my going out into the world to close rifts, amidst plenty of danger," she says.

Josephine sits, and Leliana follows suit. "We have to measure risk against reward," Leliana says. "You know that. Forward scouts go ahead of you, assess what you'll be facing, better prepare you."

"Then send scouts ahead to Lydes," Katrina says, a touch impatiently, "and I'll follow."

They exchange a glance. Katrina doesn't like what she sees in that look.

"I don't think we've anyone to spare right now," Josephine says, very reluctantly, as if she knows what Katrina's reaction will be.

"No one?" she replies in disbelief, looking between the pair of them.

"We're still recovering from Adamant." Leliana says it smoothly, and indeed, it is a known fact. "We are spread thin. Our best groups are elsewhere. I have no scouts capable of dealing with a dozen mages if the worst should happen."

"I was hoping you could at least send a party to help them on the journey. They've been on their own for years, but with the rifts…"

She trails off at the look on Josephine's face, the slight shake of her head.

"I see." She crushes the fear and anger trying to rise up through her throat and pulls open the scroll. "The letter tells them the easiest path up the mountain to Skyhold. They're near an inn south of Lydes. If you can get it to the innkeeper—"

Leliana is already nodding. "He will pass it over to them."

"I need to add that we can't spare assistance."

She hopes that the coldness in her voice, the jab, will provoke them into producing scouts or troops they claim not to have, but Josephine only silently passes over a pen. Hand trembling, Katrina signs her name in the space that Bull left her and adds a post-script.

_We're still rebuilding from our siege on Adamant, and my advisers tell me we can't spare a party to help you up the mountain. I'm sorry. If anything changes, I will send someone to intercept you at once._

She lets the words dry while the silence grows deep around them, then rolls the letter up again. Leliana drips wax over the fold and seals it with the Inquisition's crest. Katrina feels, not for the first time, that everything she is has bled into that wax, that symbol, and that nothing else—not even Piper—has room here.

"Thank you," she forces herself to say, and Leliana nods, something like regret drifting through her blue eyes.

She pushes back from the table, but Josephine catches her sleeve. "Inquisitor—Katrina—please, if you need an ear, my other work can wait."

She and Josephine have shared much during these troubled months, but Katrina sees more clearly than ever the wall that still separates them, marking the boundary between _Herald_ and _Circle Mage._ It was foolish of her to pretend at friendship in this new life, when she learned so dearly in her old one how high the cost is.

"Thank you," she says, too stiffly, "but I think I'd like to be alone."

Josephine releases her, and without looking back she goes: down into the bowels of the keep where no one else does, to continue the arduous task of cataloging the books left to languish down here. It is her usual occupation during working hours when she is at Skyhold, waiting for another event to take her out onto the field, but she has a harder time focusing on it today: her usually-careful hand misspelling the names of the unearthed tomes in her ledger, the dust billowing back in her face to be sucked into her throat.

This is where Bull finds her at midday, leafing halfheartedly through a book she might have found interesting on another day. She glances over her shoulder, and he holds up a folded note.

"The Ambassador says they couldn't spare an escort," he says.

The hot wash of guilt makes her insides squirm. Josephine has only ever treated her with kindness, trust, respect. She wishes she hadn't turned her back, pushed her away, but in the same breath, she wishes for a time when she could hurt no one, because she had no one to hurt.

"Piper has survived Kirkwall, and four years out in the world on her own," she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Demons or not, she should be able to handle a mountain."

Bull tucks the note away in a pocket. "The Chargers will go."

She turns fully to face him, frowning, but he's said it so matter-of-factly: not a suggestion he's providing her, but an answer he's already formed.

"If it's a trap," she begins, "at the very least, if they've been possessed, I wouldn't—"

Bull snorts and waves this aside. "My boys can handle a dozen abominations. Krem wouldn't talk to you for a week if you tried to keep this job from him."

She puts the book down and folds her arms over her chest. "Thought they'd just come off the road."

"Three days ago." He shrugs one shoulder. "They're rested. They'll take the route you gave Piper in the missive, and if they don't run into them by the time they get to Lydes, they'll start looking. You need to send something with them," he adds. "In your own hand. So they'll trust it's not just a merc gang sent to round them up."

She leans back against the desk. The first, faint stirrings of relief have taken hold of her muscles. "You've thought this out."

He gives her a sly grin. "I do my best thinking when I'm hitting things."

His humor, as usual, startles a laugh from her. "Alright," she says. "That's...yes. Thank you." She clears the last of the dust from her throat and dares to ask, "And you? Are you going with them?"

He moves forward, shaking his head. "No. I stay with you."

Those words shouldn't warm the space within her ribs so much, but they do, and she's sure it shows on her face. He crosses the distance between them and lifts her up onto the cleared desk.

"Now," he says, his voice lowering, "you are going to stop thinking about this for about an hour, and then you're going to take a nap. You can write the note when you wake up, and the boys'll be ready to go in the morning."

There has never been a moment that the words she keeps locked safe in her heart are more likely to shake free of her throat, despite all her sharp warnings to herself, but he saves her from that, too, tugging her collar aside to mouth the still-stinging mark from his teeth the night before, so that all that comes out is a strangled gasp instead. He smells like good, clean sweat, and the cold sunlight of a wintery Skyhold morning, and it takes some doing, but she _does_ forget, for an hour or so, under the persuasion of his patient, steady hands.

And if she dreams, tucked beneath her blankets with his warmth at her back, at least they are too confused and haphazard to make sense of once she wakes, leaving only a vague taste of unease at the back of her throat.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay; I'm in the US, and this past week has been a nightmare. Trying to re-establish some normalcy and rhythm now, so here's the next chapter.

**Drakonis 9:28**

Kat gave herself a moment to hide in the cool dark behind the palms of her hands, fingers pressed to her temples, and let the words on the page of the book fade from her mind's eye. Her head had begun to throb an hour ago, but the Senior Enchanters didn't close up the library and douse the lamps until ten o'clock, and she had time left. If she wanted to pass her Harrowing, she could not waste any of the time given to her.

She opened her eyes again and bent closer over the book. She could narrow her focus, she thought, if she knew exactly what she was studying for, but she had no idea what the Harrowing entailed. Some mages bragged that they'd had to overcome five Senior Enchanters at once, but Katrina wasn't fooled; Garvey certainly wouldn't have survived that, let alone the half-dozen others who'd gone through their Harrowings over the last few months.

She was a bit young for it—her sixteenth birthday had only been two months previous—but based on the coursework she'd been given, comparable to that of apprentices a year or two her senior, she thought it would be soon. Unharrowed mages, as everyone knew, were a liability; if they thought she could get through her Harrowing earlier, well. The sooner, the better.

Something heavy dropped onto the bench beside her, startling her from her reverie. " _There_ you are," Piper said. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

Katrina fought a smile. "And you thought you'd check the library last?"

"It's after nine," Piper said, a hint of a whine in her voice. "I can't believe even _you_ would stay in this musty old place so long."

"And yet, it's the third time in a week that this is exactly where you've found me."

Piper smacked her on the shoulder, but playfully, and Katrina grinned.

"I have higher hopes for you, is all," Piper said, leaning back against the table, one leg crossed over the other with her foot jangling out a rhythm. "Just once I'd like to catch you in a corner, snogging some other apprentice as enthusiastically as the rest of us."

Katrina's mind darted to Sophia, the sweet, quiet elven girl who smiled at her in lessons whenever Katrina answered a question correctly. Her face warmed; she bent closer over her book. "Not likely," she said.

"Maker, your face is on fire," Piper said; though Katrina wasn't looking at her, she could hear the grin in her voice. " _Have_ you been snogging someone? I checked here an hour or so ago, you know, and couldn't find you, so maybe—"

"You didn't look thoroughly? Shocking."  Katrina continued to scan the paragraph she’d now reread at least four times.

"Look, I swear you'd like it," Piper said, with a dreamy sigh. "And that's just the beginning, really, the kissing. It gets so much—"

Katrina snapped her book shut, seeing as it was difficult to stay focused on the complex theory of healing magic with Piper going on and on about kissing.

"It's not about whether or not I'd like it," she said, her voice low. "You know we're not supposed to do things like that. If you get caught—"

Piper shrugged, as careless and unconcerned as ever, and swept her hair back from her forehead. "They tell us off, I do my punishments like a good mage, and that's that. Getting in trouble is _not_ the end of the world like you make it out to be, Kat."

"I don't think it's worth the risk," she muttered. "That's all."

"Not even for Sophia, hmm?" Piper said knowingly.

"You should really be worrying about the Harrowing," Katrina said, a bit peevishly, "rather than my love life. You're two years older than me. Yours must be coming up soon."

"Why bother worrying about something I have no control over?" Piper asked. "We don't even know what the Harrowing is."

"It wouldn't hurt to be prepared," Katrina said, her stomach beginning to churn.

"I don't think books are going to help you on this one," Piper said, a bit gentler. "And you're never going to talk yourself into learning healing magic, anyway. Spirits freak you out too much."

"And they don't freak _you_ out?" Katrina asked, scowling.

"I've seen scarier things than demons." Piper's voice lowered. "People are a lot worse."

Katrina didn't know exactly what to say to that. Sure, people could be cruel, but not one of them could possess another person.

"But I'm not worried about you," Piper said, returning to her usual cheer. "You'll pass, be a full-blown mage, Enchanter within a few years—you're good at helping the little ones, and everything. Lydia adores you."

"I'm not worried about you, either," Katrina admitted. "I just wish you would take things seriously sometimes."

Piper smiled, slant-wise and rakish, and got up from the table. "Haven't you noticed that taking things seriously _sometimes_ turns into _all the time_ , and then you end up in this musty old library at all hours of the day and night, worrying yourself sick?" She pushed herself up from the bench and held a hand out to Katrina, beckoning. "Come on, let's play a game of cards before the lamps get snuffed. I've got the Ballad of Ayesleigh, I'll bet you that. Seems like it's right up your alley. Couldn't make heads or tails of it."

Katrina took the hand and let herself be heaved up, tucking her book under her arm. "And if I lose, like I always do?"

"I'll let you borrow it, anyway," Piper said with a wink. "For friendship's sake."

That was what Piper didn't understand, Katrina thought, though she only grinned back and kept it to herself. Friendship was safe, solid, stable; romance, in a place like the Circle, was too uncertain for Katrina to risk. Maybe there was a little voice at the back of her head, wondering what it'd be like to press close to another person, share a kiss in the shadows, but as she whiled away the hour until sleep with Piper, she didn't think she was really missing anything.

* * *

 

**Solace 9:42**

"Don't worry, Your Worship," Krem tells her, leaning down from his horse to clasp her hand. "We'll find 'em, bring them back safe."

Katrina forces a smile. "I know that no one else could do a better job."

Just as Krem starts to preen a little, Bull snorts behind her.

"Don't get killed while we're off doing the hard work, Chief," Krem says, scowling now, and straightens up in his saddle again. "Wouldn't want you to throw your back out again."

In answer, Bull smacks the horse's flank. It rears—Krem keeps his seat, but barely—and takes off down the bridge out of Skyhold. Katrina admires Krem's reflexes; the horse only gets twenty feet or so before it's pulled up, snorting, by its rider, who flips a rude hand gesture over his shoulder at Bull and gestures for the rest of the Chargers to follow: Dalish side-saddle with her...bow...over her lap, Rocky on his little pony, Skinner drowsing, all of them calling fond words of goodbye to Bull and Katrina as they head out.

Katrina watches, Bull's hand on her shoulder, until they've grown too small to see. "As much as I want to stay," she mutters, "and wait for her to turn up, we have other issues to deal with." Her breath hangs there in the cold Skyhold air.

He pats her shoulder. "Cassandra and Varric are waiting at the stables."

On impulse, she reaches up to touch his hand; she is no healer, but she can feel in the twitch of his muscles how the missing knuckles itch at him, so she warms her fingers with her magic in the freezing dawn and wraps them carefully around his, providing temporary relief. He releases an almost inaudible sigh.

This trip to Emprise du Lion has been planned nearly since they stopped at Skyhold a week ago, but she has never wanted to visit a place full of snow and red lyrium less. She will be distracted; the cold will be hard on Bull, though he will not admit it out loud; and they might meet their death, either by avalanche, glowing corrupted rock, or distorted templar.

His fingers squeeze hers; she can feel the newly relaxed muscles, the less swollen knuckles. "Thanks, asaaranda."

He's called her _boss_ less and less, even out in the open like this, sticking instead to the nickname he gave her at the very beginning. She doesn't think it's a slip-up; everything Bull does, he does deliberately, like moving chess pieces around the board. But if it's not a slip-up, she has no idea what it means, and she isn't ready to ask. One thing at a time.

Part of her—the part that's noted the weapons rack and gear that's inexplicably moved into her room, the part that's realized she never spends the long hours between dusk and dawn alone—draws the obvious conclusion: they are on some road, moving toward something that is separate from sharing a bed, separate from having the other's back on the field, separate, even, from long hours talking over reports over shared cups of bitter cocoa.

She cannot stop calling to mind every instance where he's told her that this is impossible, though. Indirectly, but clearly. The weight of his arm around her shoulder while she's losing at Wicked Grace with his chargers doesn't matter; the lively warmth of his eye when she looks up from her reading to find him back from drills doesn't matter; the sensation she feels in her chest, mirrored on his face when he's buried to the hilt in her, doesn't matter. He doesn't know what being in love is like, and after all, neither does she.

She pats his hand and lets go; they walk in silence to the stables, where her lighter Forder and his heavier warhorse have already been saddled by Dennet. It is too early for even Cassandra and Varric to squabble; they ride out of Skyhold without chatter, down the southern path while the Chargers have turned north, and if Katrina stops a little longer than she should at the turn, watching as if it's possible or even likely that Piper has already returned from the dead, Bull doesn't stop her, only waits with her until she turns away.

It will take them a week to reach Sahrnia on horseback, who knows how long to suss out what needs doing there, and a week to return; with luck, the Chargers will already be back, Piper in tow, when Katrina returns to Skyhold.

Cassandra rides out ahead, her usual post, and perhaps to avoid antagonizing her, Varric falls back to the rear. Bull stays close at Katrina's side through the mountain pass. She is not as good at reading people as he is, but she thinks it's likely that he's sticking close for more than the usual bodyguard reasons—offering his ear, if she wants to use it.

She feels as if she owes him a better explanation, now that he's putting his men at risk to retrieve her friend, but she knows in the same breath that he doesn't see it that way. He doesn't give favors expecting a return.

Well. She fights a smile. Not those kind of favors, anyway.

She fidgets with her reins—Olive snorts, not used to her subpar handling—and says, "I met Piper when I was ten."

His head tips just slightly toward her, indicating that he's listening above the wind's whistle and the horse's hooves.

"I'd been in the Circle about a year," she continues, "and, ah, none of the other children wanted anything to do with me. It got out that I'd come from a noble family, I guess, and they hated me on principle. Or maybe it was that I was so quiet—too shy to try and talk to them without being spoken to first. And always first in lessons, because I wanted to make sure what happened...before I went to the Circle...never happened again. All I did was study."

"I'd never have guessed," Bull deadpans. He pulls his goatskin free of his belt, takes a drink, and holds it across the gap between them. It's warm beneath her fingers, and the bitter, nearly-familiar taste of cocoa coats her tongue.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and passes it back. "I tried to make friends with the tower's cats, but they were very business-focused," she says, and he chuckles. "And so I found this mouse, and Piper—she was two years or so older than me, came into her magic later, and had just come to the Circle—came upon me just as I was trying to work out how to sneak it out of the tower and save it from the big, mean cats. She came up with a plan, we smuggled the mouse out into the garden right under Enchanter Lydia's nose, and I got a week of weeding duty for my supposed interest in plant life. Always suspected Lydia knew, and was trying to teach me a lesson about being honest."

"Sounds like my Tama," Bull says, his eye still scanning the cliffs and snow around them, but she doesn't doubt that he's listening. "Lied about stealing some cocoa from her, once. She gave me a week in the cocoa grove so I'd appreciate the work that went into the product."

"You?" Katrina says, half a smile on her mouth. "Lie?" He only raises an eyebrow in return, so she goes on. "Piper, she…" She forces her hands not to curl too tightly around the reins. "I don't know if it was because she was older, or she'd just been used to more freedom than me, but she had a hard time adjusting to the Circle. She always wanted things that most of us knew we had no right to. Privacy. Fun. Romance. Not things that a good Circle mage openly talks about."

He snorts. "Funny. I could swear I remember you ribbing me for never having _made love_. Doesn't sound like you got up to any of that yourself."

She laughs; Olive whickers at the noise. "I didn't. Doesn't mean I never wanted to. I kept my head down like I was supposed to, but it doesn't mean I never pretended. I had flings here and there, but the boundaries were clear."

He's silent for a long time after that, and when it grows too heavy to endure, she clears her throat. "After we'd both passed our Harrowings, she got more rebellious. They're not supposed to really make a Harrowed mage Tranquil, you see. We've already proven that we're not a threat. That's the way it's supposed to go, so she thought she'd try pulling on the reins a little harder. I begged her to just stay safe, but she never listened. A safe life wasn't worth living, she always said. A templar found her mid...ah... _relations_ with another mage, someone she'd been caught with before; it was clear they were doing more than getting out some excess energy. I think they might have even been planning to escape, but she never told me. They transferred her to Kirkwall not long after. I didn't even get to say goodbye."

"I don't think that'd have made it easier," he says, all somber now, the jesting gone.

She almost tells him about the letter Piper left her—long since crumbled to dust, the words still carved into her heart, but she lets it lie there silent instead. He thinks he can read her easy _now_ , and he does, but it would be a lot worse if he knew the contents of the last thing Piper ever told her. Every piece he's still missing would fill in, and he would know the long and short of her bruised, bleeding heart.

She keeps telling herself that someday, she'll fill in those blanks herself, tell him in whatever creaking voice she can muster, but today, she is still a coward.

"Did you get to say goodbye," she says, hoping this doesn't offend him, "to Vasaad?"

His eye slides sideways to inspect her. "Been a while since you asked a nosy question," he says. "Thought you'd lost the taste for it."

She ducks her head, wincing. "Guess not. Sorry, forget I—"

"Haven't I always answered all your nosy questions?" Despite the subdued note in his voice, he seems amused, too. "No. Vasaad was gone in a second. Other friends, sometimes, I got the chance before they slipped away. Not the way I'd prefer to remember them." He is still within five feet of her, but suddenly he seems much further away. "The Qun likes to think we all die with honor, glory in our mouths as the life gets pulled out of us. There's no honor in that minute, though, when they can feel themselves going and hold onto you like you can anchor them here." He shakes his head. "Still better than the ones I killed myself, though, the ones that turned Tal-Vashoth. At least they still remembered my name."

She stays quiet for a moment, waiting for him to go on, and then tentatively prompts, "Were there a lot of them? That turned Tal-Vashoth?"

He's not looking at her, but at Cassandra far ahead of them, turning periodically in her saddle, an inch of her blade bared. "A lot, yeah. I don't remember all of them. The re-educators had to work on me, after Seheron, before I was fit to come south. Some places in my memory—I know what happened, I have the summary, but I can't see it. It's blurred, like someone dripped water on the page."

She shudders, and her horse dances a bit in reaction. "That's…"

"Ugly, yeah. One thing I figured out in Seheron, and Orlais hasn't exactly convinced me otherwise: people are ugly. Human, elf, dwarf, qunari—doesn't matter. Tranquility doesn't exactly sound like a picnic, either."

"It doesn't." She hesitates, and then she asks, "Do you miss it? The Qun?"

She doesn't know what answer, exactly, she's hoping for; she thinks he'd be lying if he said he didn't, thinks it'll hurt her if he says he does. She only knows it's been burning at her since they stood together on that cliff, watching that dreadnought burn.

"Do you miss the Circle?" he returns, eyebrow cocked the way it does when he's got her cornered, all tied up and exactly where he wants her.

"Yes," she admits, "but I wouldn't go back."

He turns his face a bit to the north, taking a deep whiff of the cold mountain air. "Yeah," he agrees. "Me, neither."


	4. Chapter 4

**Cloudreach 9:32**

"Yes," Piper hissed, coming up triumphant with a thin volume. "The next _Swords and Shields_. I've been waiting ages."

Katrina shot a dubious look at the book, a splash of brightly-colored runes to match the fire-haired woman on the cover. "How exciting," she said, though privately, she vowed she'd never be talked into reading a Tethras book again. There were just so many…glazed looks and heaving bossoms, and then all the heat to be interpreted between the lines. She did enough interpreting of the library fare as it was.

Piper smacked her shoulder, though not nearly enough to hurt. "More for me, snooty," she said, and Katrina snorted, shifting through the rest of the books.

They could always rely on Cadash to bring them the most interesting selection, smuggled in under her usual lyrium shipment and secreted away behind a loose brick that had once been home to a mouse. Half of them weren't exactly to Katrina's taste, but the other half usually held some gems: a collection of short stories about a traveling apothecary, a novella told from the point of view of a mabari. The sort of stuff not nearly exciting enough for Piper, but that Katrina devoured.

"Hmm," she said, coming up with a likely book: novella-length, a cover bound in dark maroon, subdued lettering on the spine that named it _Safe Haven_ by Anonymous.

Piper groaned. "Maker, it even _looks_ boring. Nothing written by Anonymous is ever as tantalizing as you'd think."

"Hush." Katrina jiggled the brick back into place and they both retreated, away from the hiding spot and across the chantry, where there was a nice nook out of sight of the door. The punishment for possession of questionable reading material was fairly light, but if anyone discovered the source, she and Piper might find themselves without their primary source of entertainment.

Katrina made herself comfortable, back propped against the wall; Piper did the same beside her, stretching her legs out across the uneven stone floor. After a moment of listening for any noise and hearing nothing, Katrina cracked her book open to the first page.

The protagonist, Valinna, was the leader of a mercenary company. It was clearly meant to be part-adventure, part-romance; for the first few chapters, she always found herself looking at one of her men in particular, drinking with him after jobs. This wasn't nearly as purple as a Tethras story. Valinna's desire was plain but unadorned, often shunted aside by the work at hand. Katrina thought that this man was probably interested in Valinna, too; he certainly never turned aside her company. She hadn't decided whether to act on it—he was one of her men, after all, not to mention a friend who had fought beside her for years—when one night, as they slept at a roadside inn, there was a knock on her door.

_She drew her sword from its sheath; though she recognized both the footfalls and the knock, there was no need to take chances. She had made many enemies. "Yes?" she called._

_The door creaked open, and Louis slipped inside, closing it quietly again behind him. For a split second, she worked to control her expression, her fingers painfully tight on the grip of her blade. Sometimes, it surprised her that her body did not simply wrest itself from her control and go to him._

_"It's late, Louis," she said, laying the sword down across her borrowed desk. "What is it?"_

_He smiled, his brown eyes warm in the light from the fire, black hair gilded gold by it; shadows refined the angle of his cheekbones and jaw. "What's kept you up so late, then, hmm? Business?"_

_"It never ends," she said, brushing one paper aside for the next and forcing herself to look away from him._

_"I think I know what you need."_

_Her spine stiffened at his voice—not the words, exactly, but the way his tone dipped, taking on a timbre she'd never heard there before. Warm hands came down to rest on her shoulders, and she started, nearly spilling the ink pot across the desk. He'd moved behind her without so much as a sound, but then, that was his skill; the footfalls outside her door had merely been a courtesy to her._

_His thumbs touched her bare skin where her nightshirt opened around her neck, her collarbone. Her body had finally freed itself from her instruction; she found herself rooted to the spot, incapable of pulling away._

_"And what is that?" she asked. She took a little pride in the fact that her voice did not shake, was not breathless: the words perhaps more rushed than usual, but otherwise part of an ordinary conversation._

_His right hand moved, sliding from her shoulder to her neck instead, spanning the width of her throat. For a wild moment she thought that she had been betrayed—that she would be killed by her oldest friend without putting up a fight—but his hand merely rested there with a feather's weight, his thumb stroking the column of her neck._

_Fear slid away and twisted into something else. His touch seemed to slide beneath her skin, coursing down her body and igniting everything it could reach: her nipples tightened, perfectly visible now beneath her nightshirt, and between her thighs, her core throbbed._

_"You lead every minute of every day," he said, softly now, and his voice raised goosebumps under his fingers. "I thought you might want to let someone else lead. An hour or two, here or there. To give you a break, you understand."_

_The fingers of his left hand, still on her shoulder, slid beneath her nightshirt and over bare skin. Only years of training, the habits of a hard life, kept her from crying out._

_"That sounds dangerous," she said, but her own words sounded far away, echoing to her across some great distance._

_His hand pressed up, against her chin, and she let her head fall back against the chair to look up at him; he'd bent close, his face only inches from hers._

_"I have been at your back for five years," he said, perfectly serious now, no flirtatious touch of his hands to distract her; they stayed in place, heavy as stone and just as still. "I have been approached with three separate contracts for your life, and have killed the person holding the contract instead of you. Do you trust me?"_

_She stared up, into his somber brown eyes, and said, "Yes."_

The book was…explicit, and unlike any sex Katrina had ever read about before. The language was plainer, for one, which she found both refreshing and mortifying, but this was also sex as she'd never seen it written about. A lot of talking, and a lot more than just some frantic kissing and thrusting. This was strategic. This was complex, and fascinating, and…

To her horror, after a lengthy chapter of the night at the roadside inn, Katrina was nearly as aroused as Valinna—which would not have been a problem at all, she thought furtively, if there was a willing Louis around to help her out.

She didn't think she trusted anyone as much as Valinna trusted Louis. Not even Piper.

The buzz of arousal started to fade, an uncharacteristic melancholy creeping in instead. Disheartened, she bent to read again, but found the book snatched from her hands.

"You're red as a tomato," Piper said, flipping back through the pages. "I've never seen you this red, and that's saying something. What's this about?"

Katrina couldn't make her voice work enough to reply, and besides, Piper was already reading, her brows drawing together as her mouth slowly fell open.

"I don't know about that, Kat," she said, her eyes still scanning. "I don't think I'd want anyone to tie me up, even for fun."

Katrina cleared her throat. "It'd have to be someone you really trusted, wouldn't it?"

Piper closed the book and handed it back. "Do you really think you could ever trust someone that much?"

"I don't know." Katrina played with a loose bit of the leather cover, trying to imagine it. "It'd be nice, though. Feeling that safe with someone else."

Piper elbowed her gently in the ribs. "Never going to get there if you keep hiding in corners with your dusty books, are you?"

Katrina laughed. "You mean to tell me you feel _safe_ with the people you canoodle with?"

"Ugh, _canoodle_ , we've talked about how I don't like that word."

Katrina got to her feet, brushing her robes off. "Well, do you?"

"No," Piper said, following suit. "No, I don't, but I don't _need_ to, seeing as they aren't tying me up. Sylvia brought me a flower yesterday—now _that_ is romance, the way I want it."

A flower did sound nice, Katrina reflected as they left the chantry with their respective books hidden in their pockets. Chapter 4 of _Safe Haven_ did something else, though, something not better or worse, just…different. And fantasy was harmless; she'd never trust anyone to tie her up, but that didn't mean she couldn't dream.

* * *

 

**Solace 9:42**

Maybe it's the cold, or the draft, or her anxiety about staying quiet enough that the scouts don't hear what's going on in this tent, but Katrina can't focus.

She keeps chasing after the peace that she usually finds in this act, and it runs from her, like every other enemy she can't catch lately. She knows exactly what that space is like, the hazy heat, the dispersal of all thought and worry, but she can't hold onto it for longer than ten seconds, and the longer she goes unable to catch it, the harder it becomes.

She usually likes it this way so much, too: her hands bound behind her back, blindfolded, kneeling, straddling his hips while his hands and mouth take advantage of their unfettered access to her body, but tonight her knees ache, her back hurts, and her mind itches away like a spider's crept inside.

Bull is going to notice. He _always_ notices, and she certainly doesn't mind a spanking but he usually doesn't go that route in tents—respect for their scouts, and all—so he might just call the whole thing to a halt, and then where will she be? Still so wound up she can hardly breathe, and not in a good way, that's where.

His mouth pulls away from her breast. She can't help but brace herself, muscles tensing, and blindfolded as she is, she can't prepare for anything that comes next, which could be anything from a hard bite to—

His mouth finds hers. She inhales, surprised, and his arm wraps around her lower back to pull her flush against him. She shivers at the sudden, comfortable warmth of his body, crowding closer, half-wishing that her arms were free.

His hand tugs at the ropes around her wrist. She pulls back from the kiss, already shaking her head. "No, what are you—"

"You're not here," he says. The ropes loosen; he pulls them away.

"Sorry, I'm—I'm trying, I swear, I just—"

"It wasn't a criticism."

His hands work at the knot on the blindfold, and it falls away, too. There's no lamp lit in their tent for her eyes to adjust to, only the faint glow outside of the moon reflecting off snow, and by that light, she can see the way he peers closely at her face, as though trying to read her.

"It's nothing," she mutters.

He snorts. "Try again."

"Everything?"

His eye rolls. "If you don't want to talk about it, we can just go to sleep."

For a brief moment, she's tempted. She doesn't really want to wrangle her anxiety, look closely at it, but she doesn't think she can sleep without doing so, either.

"Let me just…figure out how to put it into words, for a minute," she says. "And maybe get under the blankets." Now that any hint of arousal has drained from her body, the cold seems to get colder.

Bull lifts her off of him with ease and slides into the mussed, joined bedrolls; she follows, curling up close against his right side, where his eye can more easily track down and see her. There's something intimate about this that has nothing to do with sex—being willing to share body heat, maybe, in spite of vulnerability.

And she likes being close to him, too. It's been a while since she left the Circle, but it was her life for twenty years; sometimes, it still feels like she's catching up on normal person things, like basic physical contact with other people. She breathes in the scent of his skin and closes her eyes, trying to think of how to explain all this to him.

"You're making it too complicated," his voice says from somewhere in the darkness above her. "Just talk. I'll figure it out."

She smiles, instinctively warmed by his usual confidence. "It's just Piper, I guess," she says. "Since I left, I've done everything I can not to think about the Circle, and now…it's the only place my head seems to go. I don't…" She thinks a moment longer. "I was a different person there. A worse person, I think. Thing is, I've kind of just…grit my teeth and made this whole thing with the Inquisition work. Inside, I'm still that cowardly Circle mage. If the Chargers find Piper, if we see each other again, she'll see right through this. Inquisitor, Herald, whatever. That's not who I really am."

His arm wraps around her, a brand of heat against her back, and she shivers gratefully.

"Cowardly," he repeats. Of all the words to fix on.

"Yes, cowardly," she says, a little exasperated. "Look, I wasn't like her. I didn't defy templars. I did what they said, however unfair, and strove to be as meek and unassuming and unthreatening as possible. Occasionally I read a banned book. Not exactly heroic."

"And now you kill bad guys with lightning." There's a hint of amusement in his voice, and this, incredibly, makes her more angry than anxious. "Doesn't seem cowardly to me."

"Only because I have no choice." She's insisting, and she's not sure why; she has tried very, very hard to make everyone—Bull most of all—believe that she is brave when she isn't, and now, apparently, she has lied too well. He, of all people, should be able to believe the worst of her when she presents it to him plainly.

"You had a choice. You chose to fight. No," he says, as she pushes up onto her elbow to look at him when she argues back, "you talked, now you listen."

Amusement gone, a warning there now. She obeys, reluctantly but instinctively. This much is fair; she can't contradict that. She drops back down to the bedroll, closer to his warmth again.

"Lots of examples," he says. "Best one is Haven. It's the clearest, most black-and-white. You knew you were going to die, if you went out there and fought that combination of the literal worst shit this world has ever seen. Dragon, and some weird fucked-up tall asshole, and a bunch of monsters. And you _went_. You went to die."

"I was terrified," she says, unable to stop herself from interrupting. "You were right there. I was literally shaking. I can't believe my joints stayed connected."

"What, you think only cowards feel fear?"

"Were you afraid, then?" It's a bold question, but she asks it, anyway. "In Seheron?"

He doesn't even hesitate to answer, doesn't pause in that ominous silence the way he sometimes does before acknowledging her nosy questions. "Every damn day."

She doesn't know what to say to that. Contradicts her argument a bit.

Then again, Bull _is_ a liar. Just because she has a gut feeling that he's not lying about this doesn't make it so.

"Remember what I told you, after Redcliffe?" he asks, but it's not really a question. She remembers that midnight at the river, clear as she remembers every moment with him, some sand still stuck in her hair and her teeth chattering in her mouth.

" _Asit tal-eb_ ," she says.

"Behavior over thought, over emotion, over everything," he agrees. "You are what you do. A coward hides to save her own life while the people who believe in her burn. A coward doesn't face death to protect others."

She should know better by now than to argue with him. He makes the most compelling, infuriating points, for which she has no real contradiction.

"You ever think that maybe the real pretending was what you did in the Circle?" he asks, and the question—she thinks that it's both about her and not about her. A gut feeling, one that makes no sense.

"Am I that good a liar? Twenty years' worth?" About her, and not about her. Even when they speak plainly to one another, it is somehow in riddles, echoes. She doesn't mind. It's easier to look at this sideways.

He chuckles; the sounds crawls inside her, the way it always does, warms the space between her ribs. "Maybe you could give me a run for my money."

Maybe it's all the praise, but she's feeling less like a coward than she ever has, including that night in Haven; that's why she says, "There's something else."

He listens. He _is_ good at that, whenever she can get herself to speak.

"How stupid would you think I am if I told you that I trust you?"

One of his fingers twitches against her back.

"I know how good a liar you are," she says. Her eyes are open, but this is easy to say to the dark, not looking at him. "You could be lying to me. That dreadnought could have been a ploy. But I trust you. All logic tells me I could wake up with a knife in my back, but I trust you. I tell myself that's true of everyone—that just because I _know_ you're a professional liar doesn't mean you're necessarily more likely to betray me than anyone else might be, because there could be professional liars all around and I just don't know it, since they haven't walked up and announced it to me…but it still…it sits there, at the back of my head. And I wish it would just go away."

The arm around her back tightens. "You could do the same to me. Vitaar or not, horns or not, you catch me sleeping—and you're generally the only person who does—and you could end it just as easily."

There's something thoughtful about his tone as he says this. She can't decide what it means.

"I guess you're right." She nibbles her lip, already chewed up by the last few days of riding through snow and wind, and adds, "Does that bother you?"

She feels him shrug. "No. It bothers you, though."

"A lot of things bother me," she points out, and he laughs. "I don't…trust…people. It's dangerous."

"Yeah, well, you're not people. You're Kat."

Her eyes feel suspiciously wet. He saves her the embarrassment of coming up with a response; his arm spills her onto her back and then he's above her, mouth at her throat, hand at her hip. This time, there is no chase. Her thoughts disperse; she trusts, blindly; and when she wakes up in the morning, she's still alive.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning on this chapter in particular for canon-typical violence, gore, torture taking place in the Circle.

**Firstfall 9:36**

For fourteen years, Katrina hadn't gone a single day without seeing Piper.

Even on the day of each of their Harrowings, they had sat with one another in pained, agonizing silence—the first silence Katrina had ever spent with Piper, and hopefully the last. On this ordinary day, then, there was no logic to her absence. The hours passed; Piper's usual haunts, repeatedly visited, did not produce her; the fear set into Katrina's heart until she could hardly think.

With only one hour left until the lamps were put out, she would have to go to Lydia soon. She'd avoided it this long, not wanting to get Piper in trouble with one of her beaus, but even Piper wouldn't stay scarce for so many hours. Katrina was not the only one who might notice. Either Piper had finally made good on her old promise of escape, or…

She paused in her search of the second floor, eye drawn by the scuffed-clean stone around the bottom of an otherwise dusty door. A disused room, she thought, from a time when Ostwick played home to more mages. Someone had been in and out recently, though, judging by the clean swipe through the dusty stone.

For a brief instant, her heart lifted. Piper had found a new haunt, that was all, and either she was on the other side of that door or she'd already snuck back to her room.

She pulled the door open, and her mind did not make sense of the image waiting for her. Piper, dangling in the center of the room. Arms above her head, ropes tied from her wrists to the rafters. Head lolled forward, the ends of her blond hair stained red.

Reacting, maybe, to the quiet creak of the door opening, she squirmed; briefly, Katrina saw her body in profile, the back of her robes torn and wet.

"Did you come back for more?" Piper said, her voice unlike anything Katrina had ever heard before: a rasp, so filled with hatred and disgust that it had warped beyond recognition.

The door banged shut behind her, and Katrina jumped. In her shock, she'd released the handle. "It's me," she forced out, pressing her ear to the door to listen for any passersby. It seemed the slam had gone unnoticed.

"Shit. Get out of here, Kat. If he comes back—"

"I'm not going anywhere until I get you down."

Frantically, she looked around the room; the only furniture likely to get her high enough to untie Piper was a rickety chair.

"I'm serious," Piper said, barely audible over the scrape of the chair's legs across stone. A splatter of blood marked the stone beneath Piper's dangling body. "This templar, he's not going to play nice with you just because you've never been in trouble. Go get Lydia."

"In a minute." Katrina tested the chair with one foot braced on it, prayed, and scrambled up; it groaned but held. She stood as still as she could and worked at the knots around Piper's wrists. Tight, and slippery with blood, they resisted the clawing of her fingers. This close, the smell crawled through her nose and down into her stomach; she swallowed and breathed through her mouth.

Finally, the rope came free; Piper landed on her feet with a hard exhale and immediately staggered sideways into the chair and Katrina's legs. Hurriedly, before the chair could collapse, she climbed down. Piper leaned on her instead, breathing hard through her nose, her face bone-white.

"What happened?" She pulled Piper's arm over her shoulders and tried to find a spot on her back that wasn't mangled to place her own arm for support, but it seemed as if every inch was sticky with blood. Piper groaned.

"Was messing around with Daniel. Thought they wouldn't catch us. Never seen a templar that pissed. Andraste's ass—go get Lydia. Don't think I can walk all the way there."

"I can't leave you here." Katrina tugged, and Piper shuffled her feet with another whine of pain. "If he comes back—"

"Another twenty lashes won't kill me."

"But maybe he will," Katrina said, the terror of it filling her like that long-ago taste of lyrium. "Just come on."

Piper didn't argue again; she leaned on Katrina and shuffled forward with her, and they were halfway to the door before it creaked open again.

She didn't recognize the templar standing there, and why would she? She left them alone; they left her alone. They were just empty, silent armor, patrolling the halls, arms folded in corners. Beside her, Piper's breathing took on a new tempo, fast and shallow with fear.

"I'll give you one opportunity to put her down and leave, robe," the templar said, stepping over the threshhold.

"You can't do this." She tried to make her voice blunt like a weapon, but it shivered from her throat. "The punishment for being caught fraternizing is nothing as severe as this. Let us pass."

He took another step into the room, armor settling and clanking, hand resting on the pommel of his sword. Katrina tried to back away, to drag Piper back, but her legs wouldn't obey. She had never, ever been in trouble with the templars; she had been a good, obedient mage, and her word had to mean something, didn't it?

"Don't talk about what you don't understand," he snarled. "I'll hang you with her if you don't get out."

"Kat, just go," Piper breathed. "Not your problem."

"Shush." Though her legs shook, she stared into the dark slit in the helmet where the eyes had be. "I'm going to have to report you to the First Enchanter."

He gave an ugly, hacking laugh. "What does he care? She's been trouble before. She'll be trouble again. Get out, if you know what's good for you."

Finally, she broke the hold of the stone floor on her feet; she backed away even as he advanced, until she was at the chair and could brace Piper against it. She stood in front of her then; her friend, so much shorter and smaller than her, breathed heavily behind her.

"No," Katrina said, her voice small and shivering.

He moved more quickly than she'd imagined possible in that armor and those skirts; he didn't draw his blade, but he didn't have to. She tried to duck the blow, but his gauntleted hand struck her face, opening her skin from brow to temple, deep into her hairline; the pain of it stunned her. She reached for her magic instinctively, in defense, sparks taking life on her fingers—

Something reached inside her and choked her. She gasped, reeling, and blinked to find herself prone on the floor, his boots inches from her nose.

No magic answered the call inside her; the well was dry, and she had no other defense. She tried to stretch, to yank it from within her, but that only intensified the pain in her head.

"You're all the same," he said, his voice lower now, almost calm. "Say words like you're people, but in the end, you have that unholy thing inside you. You could kill us all."

He brought his boot up, and she watched it as if each inch took a moment to pass; belatedly, she thought she could still roll away, but her muscles didn't react to her attempt at movement. The shiny boot paused and began to come down. Katrina closed her eyes.

The blow didn't come. She waited, shaking, her breath held—

"I don't know what you think you're doing," a familiar voice said, "but I will _not_ allow it."

Katrina forced her eyes open; she saw a glimpse of Lydia at the doorway, face livid with rage, before she flicked her wrist sideways. The templar flew across the room and into the wall in a crash of armor, crumpling down to the floor.

Lydia hurried forward, keeping her hand stretched out toward where he lay prone. She knelt down beside Katrina. "What happened?"

"Found Piper tied up. Untied her, was going to take her to the First Enchanter, when he came back." Coughing, Katrina sat up, the blood warm all down the side of her face, her head throbbing. With Lydia controlling the templar, the weight of his Silence had lifted from her chest, but all still felt dark and cold inside her. "Guess she was caught fraternizing again."

"That doesn't justify this." With her free hand, Lydia grasped Katrina's arm below the shoulder and pulled her to her feet. "We need a healer, and the First Enchanter. Go; I'll hold him until you're back."

Katrina didn't hesitate; even with the blood still seeping into her hair, she jogged through the tower, ignoring the startled and fearful glances of mages she passed.

Long after the healer had closed the worst of her wounds, long after the First Enchanter and Knight-Commander had shouted themselves hoarse at one another, long after Piper had fallen asleep, Katrina sat up, running her fingers over and over the new scar across her brow. Each time she breathed in, she could still smell the blood.

Piper was her best—her only—friend. They could not take Piper from her. They _would_ not. Next time a templar moved to strike her, she wouldn't stand there shivering and wait for it.

* * *

 

**August 9:42**

_Kat._

The wind moans around her. Somewhere, far above her, someone is calling her name as if through deep, impenetrable water. She blinks, but only a little more light filters in, all blurred and smeared through the darkness.

_That arm is broken._

She blinks again, trying to focus. There's a shadow in that thin silver light, the shape of a face she knows.

_Come on, Kat, I need you awake._

The mouth moves. She knows the voice, the familiar deep rumble of it, but not the thin undercurrent of tension; she doesn't recognize that. And her name. Still mostly unfamiliar, formed by his mouth.

 _Kadan_. She hears the ruckus of others, their voices an incomplete jumble, but his echoes through. She knows that word, doesn't she? She's heard it before, in a place like this, barely reaching her through the haze in her own head. _Wake up, kadan._

Something presses to her mouth, and her lips part automatically. Water, clear and crisp and cold, pours in. She swallows greedily as sensation begins to return to her: the cold wet in her boots, the iron in her mouth, the pain—

It cracks her open from shoulder to wrist, wracks her when she takes a shuddering gasp. She blinks one more time, but her vision does not get much clearer: impeded by night, smeared by her watering eyes. The soft, cold snow cradles her body; the stars, dizzyingly bright and high above her, spread thick across the sky. She tries to breathe deep and there's a whine in her throat, a splinter in her side, and the throbbing, constant and hot and hurting, in her right arm. Bull blocks half the view above her, his face as still and calm as it always is, one hand holding the water skin to her mouth, the other curled around her uninjured shoulder.

"You here?" he says, pulling the water skin away from her lips, but she barely comprehends it; she has never felt pain so all-encompassing, _never_ , unless maybe on the night that Haven—

"Kat," he says, leaning closer. "What year is it?"

"Did I hit my head," she says through gritted teeth, all in a rush; it feels like her arm is going to fall clean off.

"Might've. You were halfway across the courtyard on my blind side when you landed."

"9:42," she says after a pause, not caused by uncertainty but by the sudden conviction that the pain will swallow her whole. "What did I—"

But before she can finish asking, she remembers: Imshael striding to Bull's flank, the lightning she used to get its attention, its pivot away from Bull and toward her, too quick for her to react, the slam of being _thrown_ , across the courtyard and into the stone balustrade by the stairs.

"Shit," she mutters. She wishes she couldn't feel the arm, the ribs, that surely cracked beneath the force of that attempt at flight. She turns her head to the side and sees nothing but splatter in the snow, Bull's axe lying in the imprint of a massive body, gleaming red.

"Breathe deep," Bull says, and automatically, she obeys. The pain in her ribs spikes and settles back to dull throbbing as she exhales.

"Ribs fractured, I think," she says, slowly beginning to turn her head again. "My arm—"

Bull's hand comes free of her shoulder and grasps her chin instead, holding her in place. "Don't look." He lets her go again and holds up one finger. "Follow with just your eyes."

"Are you a healer now," she retorts, but she does what he says, even though her eyes keep watering. "Did you find a head wound?"

"Hard to tell." Apparently satisfied, his hand returns to her uninjured shoulder. "No weird bumps, but your hair's full of slush."

"Ugh."

She closes her eyes, hoping that the pain will be lesser if she doesn't have to look at the world, but it doesn't help much.

His hand squeezes. "Stay awake."

"A potion should take care of your ribs if they're only fractured, Inquisitor."

Katrina forces her eyes open again; Cassandra appears in her field of vision, rummaging in her pack. She continues, "The arm, though—"

"There's no healer out here," Varric interrupts. "We need to go back to Skyhold."

"Skyhold is a week away," Cassandra says. "By then—"

Katrina can hardly follow the conversation; her eyes wander, her arm throbs, one entire half of her body aches, and Bull leans closer over her, until she can see nothing else.

"Kat, we need to set the arm."

She holds onto his voice, trying to use it to tie herself here, to consciousness; with her unbroken arm, she reaches up to grasp, weakly, at his elbow.

"Then set it," she rasps.

"It's going to hurt," he warns.

"Just set it," she repeats, her head swimming, "and give me a damn potion."

"Seeker." Bull's eyes never leave her face. "I'm going to hold her still."

"I'm sure it will be easy," Katrina says, with what feels like the last air left to her. "I'll probably pass out as soon as she touches it."

She barely hears Varric's appreciative laugh; with the brisk efficiency only Cassandra possesses, she kneels in the snow and begins to arrange Katrina's arm. The cold helps a little. She's too scattered to find and use her magic in instinctive retaliation, and Bull probably doesn't have to work very hard at holding down her shoulders. She would thrash if she had the strength, but as it is, she mostly pants like a dying bear and bites her lip bloody trying not to scream or cry while Cassandra feels along the break to re-align the bone.

Darkness prickles at the corners of her vision. It's hard to hear, like she's in the middle of a wind tunnel, but he reaches her through it, barely. _You're doing fine, kadan_. She sees his mouth move, hears the words agonizing minutes later, prays that she'll pass out, now, any moment now—

"It's done," Cassandra says. "Varric—a potion—"

Bull forces her jaw open and Varric pours it in. The pain goes sharp and hot, hotter, and then fades, slowly, to a dull throb. The torn flesh in her lip knits. Her ribs feel a little weak, but it doesn't hurt when she breathes in. The arm, though—healed or not, she doesn't think she can move it. It's too stiff, no strength in it at all, laid out in the snow beside her.

"It needs a sling," Cassandra says, and Varric starts digging in his pack for bandages. Katrina breathes hard through her nose, trying very hard both to stay awake and not to throw up; she can feel herself trembling in shock and can't stop it. There's no wind tunnel anymore. Every word is clear and painful, every sensation is full and excruciating, and she has never felt more horribly awake.

"Look at me," Bull says.

She sees something on his face that doesn't belong there, something that's almost _scared_.

"I'm fine," she tells him, trying to reassure, but her voice shakes wildly and she can feel hot tears on her face. "Fucking demons."

He thumbs the tears from her cheeks. "Next time, just let the bastard hit me."

"Hard promise to keep."

Varric hands the bandages over to Bull. "Well, we've got the Keep," he says, though by the sound of his voice, he's not sure this ruin is worth it. Katrina's not, either. "I'll run back to the scouts."

Cassandra paces away with him, just to the mouth of the courtyard, sword and shield in hand.

"Here," Bull says, sliding an arm beneath Katrina's back. "Sit up, and I'll get this sling made."

He has to do most of the work. Her muscles are water, her bones are brittle, and once she's sitting up she has a hard time staying there. She has to lean forward against his chest while he works, moving her here and there like a rag doll while he wraps the bandages to form a cradle for her arm.

"I told you," he says, and it reassures her to hear a vague note of amusement back in his voice. She closes her eyes and wraps herself in it, pushing out the cold.

"Told me what?" she asks.

"Back in the Fallow Mire. You said you'd never broken a bone."

She snorts. "It was bound to happen eventually."

He knots the sling over her shoulder and pulls her to rest more comfortably against him. She can't believe, even with the piercing wind driving through them, how warm he is.

It's probably some combination of the cold, and the pain, and the fatigue—they've been fighting for what feels like hours, every step through this broken old ruin harder than the last—that makes her say it. "We've got the Keep. Can we just...can we just go home?"

She wants to hide for a little while, just until her arm stops throbbing. High in her Skyhold bedroom, with its roaring fire and the rack of Bull's weapons and armor and the little drawers that hold his pots of vitaar, with the wide bed bought with a blush on her face and Bull's smirk at the stammering shopkeep, with the books spilling onto every available surface and the quiet hour right after midnight, snow and stars visible outside the curtainless window, Bull warm beside her.

"I just want to go home," she says. It's been a lifetime since she last uttered those words, a scared child in pigtails, crying in Lydia's office while the Enchanter made gentle hushing noises and assembled a cup of tea.

His arm squeezes tight around her. "As soon as you can ride."

She rattles out a sigh of relief. "Tie me to my horse. She won't mind."

The chuckle reverberates through him and into her. He tucks her head beneath his chin and she presses as close as she can with her uninjured side, keeping her eyes shut tight.

"I heard something," she says, even though the exhaustion is finally hitting her; combined with his warmth, she has to work to stay conscious. "While I was trying to wake up."

"What?" he asks. She tries to analyze the tone, the inflection, but she's fading.

"Heard it before," she says, clinging to the unraveling thread of thought. "I think I was asleep. This…word. It sounds…it sounds like…"

But the world falls away beneath her; she might as well be swimming through mud. Not the first time she's fallen asleep mid-sentence, though later, she thinks that all the other instances have been markedly more pleasant.

He doesn't ask her to clarify on the long ride home, and she doesn't bring it up again. By the time the sun has risen the next morning, it all feels like a fever-dream, anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A certain canon scene has been modified, just a bit. I hope you'll indulge the change.

**Firstfall 9:36**

She didn't ever get the chance to hit back.

"I'm sorry, Katrina," Lydia said, her hands folded on her desk.

The world seemed much smaller now, somehow, as if the stone walls had come so close that they could suffocate her.

"I argued," Lydia continued. "She's a good mage, smart, not a real danger, but…in the end, the First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander agreed. She just doesn't fit at Ostwick."

Katrina's fingers clenched around the threadbare knees of her robes. "Where?" she said, forcing the word through her closing throat. "Where did they send her?"

She looked up, in time to catch the bleak look that she'd only seen on Lydia's face once before: in the hall outside the Harrowing Chamber, her cool fingers resting on Katrina's shoulder.

"Kirkwall," she said.

* * *

The shock of it followed her for days. She had her chores, her duties, and she performed them robotically, even the few hours she spent out in the crisp winter sunshine of the garden, tips of her fingers numb from the wet soil, cold as grave dirt. She wasn't an Enchanter yet, and wouldn't be for another year, after this debacle; she had no classes to teach, spent most of her time in her room, trying to pick up activities she'd once enjoyed and unable to focus on any of them.

By the end of the week, though, she'd reached the end of her limited clothes supply. She pulled the last of her clean underclothes from her small chest of drawers, and something rustled at the movement: a folded scrap of paper, rasping against the rough wood.

She recognized the glimpse of handwriting at once. Snatching it from the drawer, she hurried across the room to her desk, smoothing the paper open across it.

_Dear Kat,_

_I'm pretty sure they're going to transfer me soon. Lydia hinted at it. I suppose I've been a little too much trouble, kept pissing the templars off by wanting things like privacy and fresh air and a little dignity. A lot to ask, right?_

_If it turns out that I'm just paranoid and I don't get sent away, you can forget this, but it might be my last chance to say something to you that isn't a joke, so here it is: they tell us when we come to the Circle that we're supposed to give up our families, give ourselves to the Maker, devote ourselves to nothing and no one but him. Didn't stop us, though, did it? We will always be family, Kat. You are my best friend, my sister, and there hasn't been a single moment in these last fourteen years that I've regretted._

_I know what you're like. You don't think you deserve anything good, wearing your chains of guilt like a good Chantry mage, but you're wrong. You've always deserved good things. I've known that since I met you trying to save that mouse. Always trying to protect the innocent. And the not-so-innocent. Sorry about your face. Bet the scar'll look dashing, though._

_Don't wall yourself away just because they tell us it will keep us safe. We kept each other safe. Remember that._

_All my love,_

_Piper_

For the first time since Lydia gave her the news, Katrina's eyes stung. She crumpled the letter into a ball and shoved it away.

* * *

 

**August 9:42**

They've been back at Skyhold for three days, and there's still no sign of the Chargers or Piper.

There was a letter waiting for them when they returned from Emprise du Lion, Kat's mended arm aching from the cold, written in Krem's abrupt hand. They hadn't run into Piper's group on the way to Lydes, and were beginning their search for them in the city and its surroundings instead. Leliana told them it had arrived only five days previous, which means that the Chargers have been looking for Piper for eight days and haven't yet sent word that they've found her.

Maybe she is just a ghost. Maybe there is no mending for this, like the bone that keeps paining her at odd hours even though, according to Skyhold's surgeon, it's healed perfectly. Maybe it's time for her to let Piper go for good.

She doesn't know how to do that, exactly. She didn't really grieve the first time, and now she knows that some part of her has never believed that Piper was really dead or Tranquil; she didn't think much about it, but whenever she dreamed of her old friend, she was free and careless, puttering around some isolated farm with a ramshackle house in the background, a dog prancing around her feet, and a faceless woman calling her in from the fields for dinner. Never with a sunburst on her forehead, never bloody on the ground.

"Hey," Bull says, tugging gently on the hair he's helping her wash; it's still hard to raise her left arm above shoulder level. "Where did you go?"

She sighs, stretching her legs out in the warm, soapy water. "Nowhere good."

He goes back to massaging soap into her scalp, and she closes her eyes. Despite the ragged ache inside her, it feels nice to be tended to like this.

"I'm not saying it's a good thing we haven't heard from them yet," he says. "But there's plenty of explanations. She could still be alive. All you can do is wait."

She sinks a little deeper into the water, letting it cover her up to her shoulders. Despite the warmth, there's been a shard of ice lodged inside her since the receipt of that letter, and she can't seem to shake it free.  "It's not that. She's been as good as dead for five years. I'm not…grieving my trampled hopes, or anything."

He starts rinsing the soap from her hair with a pitcher of clean, warm water. She tips her head back to help.

"What, then?" he asks.

She thinks of the letter, the crumbling paper she carried in her pocket for five years and all the way to the Conclave, lost in the Fade. She'd reread it so many times that she knows the words by heart; they have the cadence of a Chant now, repeated in quiet moments when her mind can't produce anything else. _Don't wall yourself away_ , Piper had asked her, and Katrina had done the exact opposite, retreating so far into herself that when she _had_ finally been thrust back into the world, every living thing had terrified her.

"After Vasaad died," Katrina said, settling her shoulders back against the rim of the tub. "Did you think it would be worth getting close to someone like that again, if you'd just…lose them? In the end?"

He pours the last of the water over her hair. "No."

This is her answer, _the_ answer, and she has been so prepared for it that her heart barely hiccups in protest. That's it, then. That's—

"Not at first," he continues, and she listens, hardly breathing. "Not for a long time. The Chargers…they ended up changing my mind." He chuckles. "Krem reminds me of Vasaad sometimes. Same fucking cocky attitude. Gonna get him killed. But something's gonna get all of us killed. Maybe that big ugly Vint, maybe some regular demon, maybe a cold. Might as well work with the time you've got."

Her throat's too tight to speak, and she doesn't know what she'd say, anyway. She just nods and goes on soaking, his hand absently tracing patterns in the soap and water across her shoulders.

* * *

A day later, she kneels down at the locked chest in the loft above her bed.

Bull ripped the tooth from the beast's maw himself, the first dragon that they ever fought. Covered in blood, arm half-singed, he gave a laugh more like a roar and held it up for her to see, long as his forearm and wickedly sharp, gleaming in the sunlight. She'd only just put out the fire on her coat from the thing's last breath, but his wide, victorious grin made her stomach swoop in a way she misses dearly, now that it's clenching with dread.

Made in a moment of weakness, the tooth—split in two, and hanging on a sturdy chain—waits for her to pick it up.

She's never loved anyone the way she loves him. She's hardly loved anyone, period, and she shouldn't. Circle mages do not get to have this thing that she wants, and Qunari don't, either.

But he's not Qunari anymore, and she's not a Circle mage anymore. Can the chains of societies that have cast them out really hold them now?

Can she love him, despite what she is? Does he love her, and she's just been willingly blind to it?

She closes the chest and takes it with her, through the backways and hidden paths of Skyhold, avoiding anyone who might hail her and diffuse this bravery before she can use it. Her arm aches a little at the burden, but she hardly notices it beneath the thunder of her racing heart, sprinting as if it knows it is nearly at an end. If she can just get to the tavern, if she can just catch his eye, it will be done. No backing out. No more fear.

She steps through the door into the muggy, ale-heavy room, and searches him out without issue; he is always marking the routes in and out of any building he sits in, so as soon as the door opens, he's looking at her. His mouth curls into the sly, fond smile that makes her stomach swoop. For an elated, perfect instant, everything is clear to her as it's never been. She moves through the press of bodies and thick heat, because he is waiting for her; there is no other choice.

Unnecessarily, she hefts the chest in her arms. "I have something for you," she tells him, to eliminate all other possibility.

His eyebrow quirks at the box, but he looks at her instead, not to be distracted. "Really," he drawls, and not for the first time, she wishes she could sink into the comfort of that voice forever and be done with it. "Well, I think I've got something for you, too. Come on. I'll go first."

She gives an involuntary, desperate laugh; she wants to tell him, "Don't make this dirty," or maybe, "No, not _that_ kind of something," but instead she lets him relieve her of the chest and follows him up the stairs.

* * *

She's only just coming down from the first orgasm, Bull's head between her thighs and his tongue still eliciting little shivers from her flesh, when he murmurs, "There we go. No Inquisition. No war. Nothing outside this room. Just you…and me."

His fingers slide, gently, halfway out of the grip of her body—and then back in, slowly. His tongue leaves a soft caress over the whole of her sex, making her twitch, making her back arch. She tries to breathe deeply.

"So." His head tips sideways onto her thigh, and she looks down her body at him, half-delirious. "What did you want to talk about?"

For a moment, she doesn't know what _he's_ talking about, and then she remembers the chest and the whole point of this and groans.

That, of course, is the moment that the door bangs open and the _nothing_ outside Bull's room wanders in, taking the form of Cullen's voice.

She's too mortified to screech, and also somewhat frozen in place, but Bull reacts quickly enough for the both of them: he reaches for the bunched-up sheet at the foot of the bed and tosses it over Katrina, who manages to tuck it around herself and stand on legs made of water, one hand frantically trying to right her now-mussed hair.

"Oh, sweet Maker," Cullen says.

"How's it going," Bull replies, nonchalant as ever, and helpfully holds the sheet closed behind Katrina, his hand resting on her ass.

"Exactly what did you think—" Katrina begins, her mortification giving way to indignation, and Josephine, too, stops dead in the doorway, a sentence trailing away to nothing.

They all stare at one another for a few seconds, sputtering a word or two here or there; Katrina can't make sense of what _either_ of them are saying, and so stands there, sheet clamped around her and mouth hanging slightly open. Cassandra's voice starts up from the battlements outside, growing steadily closer, and Katrina gives Josephine what she can only assume is the most aghast look one person has ever given another—except that Josephine isn't even _looking_ at her, but at Bull. Cullen is shielding his eyes.

"For fuck's sake," Bull says.

For an unknowable reason, Cassandra looks at Cullen. "Are you _seeing_ this?"

He says, stoutly, "No." Andraste bless him.

Cassandra, never to be put off by anything from overlarge demons to naked men, begins to ask, "So I take it—"

"Actually," Bull interrupts, and Katrina recognizes the tone, the _it's-time-to-fuck-with-them_ tone, and briefly closes her eyes in preparation. "She's the one who's been taking it."

Cullen snorts. Katrina rescinds Andraste's blessing, which she's pretty sure she can actually do, given the whole Herald nonsense.

"I apologize for interrupting what I assume was a…momentary diversion," Cassandra says, also not to be put off by Cullen reacting to teenage humor.

"Momentary diversion?" Katrina repeats, her mortification flaming into something else entirely; she's too busy talking over Cullen and Josephine's newest stammerings to hear them at all. "First of all, what _exactly_ did you all think I was doing here, in Bull's room, with the door closed? Playing _chess_?"

"Not outside the realm of possibility," Cullen mutters, but Josephine has the grace to look abashed.

"Second of all," she continues, louder now, "the feigned surprise seems unnecessary, since you wouldn't know to look for me here unless you also knew I was engaging in a _momentary diversion_."

No one has a response for this, and only Cassandra is looking at her now, her eyes squinted up in what might be disapproval or interest. Katrina, finally, does not care in the least which it is.

"Finally," she says, now at a near shout, growing shriller by the syllable, "this was more than just a momentary diversion, and Bull and I intend to continue, not that it's any business of yours! _Get out_."

Behind her, Bull chuckles. They stammer their apologies—except for Cassandra, who does not stammer unless confronted with her love of romance novels, and does not apologize unless she truly believes it necessary. Josephine closes the door behind her.

Bull's hand pats her ass, and she closes her eyes, breathing heavily. Hard to shout at people you count among your friends and allies when you can still feel the slick of your own arousal smeared between your thighs. She's not sure that the whole thing wasn't just a hazy, terrifying dream.

"You okay, boss?" he says, and they're back to that, so quick, the warm bubble of safety and comfort she'd wrapped herself in gone.

She sits down on the bed just behind her, and he shifts a bit to make room for her, the bulk of his body pressed against her back.

"No," she says miserably. "I was trying to...to do something for you...and they just…" With a frustrated sigh, she leans down and heaves the chest onto the overturned barrel beside his bed. It creaks in warning. She is too wrung out, now, too angry and annoyed to be afraid. She slides the clasp open, reaches in, and wraps the chain of one half of the tooth around her fist, heaving it out and into her lap.

There's a pause while she stares down at it, the fingers of her other hand curled protectively around the polished enamel, and he shifts again until he can get a clear look at it.

"What's that?" he asks.

Like he's confused. Like he doesn't know. But he can't be, he shouldn't be. Bull always knows—because of the way she's trembling and because he has one perfectly good eye to see that it is a dragon's tooth. One half of a dragon's tooth. Molded to a silver clasp, connected to a silver chain. He knows everything before it happens, sees everything before it can unfold. This should be no different, but...

She thinks it is a stretch to believe that Bull is as afraid as she is, but maybe it's not a stretch to believe that he is, at least, a little afraid. That if she had said something else to her nosy, interrupting advisors, it might have hurt him more than she thought she could.

She wishes she hadn't kept him waiting so long.

"A dragon's tooth, split in two." She can't even hear him breathing; he has become stone behind her, utterly still. "So no matter how far apart life takes us, we're...we're always together." She clears her throat, a last bit of uncertainty breaking through. "If you want. Because I do. Should have told you earlier, probably. Was too scared."

He reaches up to touch her cheek, turn her to look at him. She's never seen this look on his face before. Moved, she thinks, touched, like she's done something grand and incredible instead of something small and desperate.

"Not often people surprise me, kadan," he says, and his voice is different, too, the gentle, easy tone he uses when it's just them. She's not sure how she didn't hear it before. She can't believe she hasn't been listening.

She offers a quavering smile that he returns. When she looses the clasp on the chain and holds it out to him, he bends his head. Fingers shaking, she reaches around his neck and re-fastens it. With the hand that isn't touching her, he cups the weight of the tooth in his palm, like it's some fragile, soft thing that needs protecting.

"Kadan?" she repeats, just to be sure.

"Kadan." He draws her down toward him, and willingly, she goes. "My heart."

She has time to let out a rush of a laugh, more air than sound—"Kadan," she says, happiness growing like a thunderstorm inside her—and then he's kissing her, as tenderly as he's ever kissed her, his hand curled around the back of her neck, her fingers wrapped tight around his shoulder.

When his hand loosens, she pulls back, another laugh bursting from her. "I don't think mine will fit," she says, the words thick. "I want to wear it, but—maybe I can chisel it down? Is that against tradition?"

He's smiling, grinning as wide as he did the day he pulled that tooth from the dragon's jaw. "I think we're making up our own traditions at this point."

"I suppose we are." She's so wildly, terribly happy that it seeps through into her shaking voice. His fingers stroke the back of her neck, soothing her. "Alright, I'll have it redone a bit."

"Ah, ah, ah. I'll do it." He touches the crook of her neck now, where his teeth were at her flesh not half an hour ago, and his grin turns wolfish; her insides quiver, not in fear but anticipation. "You got one of those big table meetings tonight?"

"Nothing that I can't skip," she says, thinking privately that her advisors owe her that much.

"Good." He tugs at the sheet tucked beneath her arms, pulling it fully away from her body. "I think we'll be busy celebrating."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It didn't feel like this was quite the place for it, but be on the lookout in the next week or so for a standalone fic featuring Much Celebrating. ;)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double feature this week: I'm posting this chapter the night of the 18th and will post the final chapter on the 19th. Decided to include the sex scene in the story, after all. If you're not into that, you can totally skip this chapter without missing any plot, etc.

**August 9:42**

The half-piece of polished dragon's tooth presses to Katrina's breastbone. Bull's hands tighten on her hips, fingers not squeezing quite hard enough to bruise, but pull her closer against him. The sheets are tangled around them; so far he has not tried to extricate them, and she's too busy touching every inch of him that she can reach, fingers stroking over skin and scars.

"How long," he says against her mouth, and then stops talking to go on kissing her; his hands flex against the small of her back now, and she gives a moan of approval, her knees squeezing tighter around his hips. He pulls back from her mouth, and she starts to whine a complaint until his lips find her throat instead. "How long," he says again, the brush of teeth and tongue against her skin present in every syllable, "have you been sitting on this thing?"

She laughs, the sound of it thin as air; he bites in one of her favorite spots, at the crook of her neck, the pressure just right, and the laugh trails off into a moan.

"Just the tooth?" she manages, though she can feel how hard he is, pressed against her belly; it's a challenge to keep her mind clear. "From the Frostback—when was that? Months and months ago now—"

One hand reaches up to grasp her chin, hold her still, and he stops her disjointed attempt at an explanation, his mouth capturing the words she tries to gasp out. She gives up without any disappointment. His teeth catch on her lower lip, just enough for a shudder of sensation, and then he cups her cheek and tips her head just enough to deepen it, his tongue briefly touching hers.

He wraps an arm around her, and before she knows what he's about, he's stood up, turned, and dumped her on her back on the bed. She gives a little _huff_ of consternation on impact, but then he's with her, one hand beneath her thigh to hitch her leg up around his waist. Her back arches; she presses to the hard length of him with a hopeful whine; but he chuckles in her ear and bites gently at her earlobe.

"Was it the one I ripped out?" he asks. She could be imagining it, but she thinks he sounds a little less controlled than usual, more emotion bleeding through.

She doesn't mind. Either way. However he wants. Wildly impractical though it is, the dragon's tooth is a key, lets her see clearly the code that he—that they—have been speaking all this time.

"While my coat was on fire? Yes," she says, and sighs when he puts his mouth to that spot on her neck again, tipping her head on the pillow to give him better access.

"And the chain?" The hand that was beneath her thigh is now gently cupping her breast, a thumb running a feather-light circle around the areola. She's panting, trying to arch up into his touch, the arousal beating between her legs. "I told you about that old story months ago."

"A few weeks," she gasps out; he lowers his head to take her nipple into his mouth and she nearly cries at the sensation of his tongue, rolling gently over her flesh. "Took forever to decide—if you were serious—if you'd want—"

He laughs again, smoothing a hand down her belly and over the hair between her thighs. One finger slips over that spot, the place all her nerves seem now to converge, and circles lightly.

"It _is_ an old story," he acknowledges. "Didn't think you'd try it. Surprised me," he adds, in a mutter.

"Hah," she says, triumph sliding into a moan as his finger presses harder.

He settles between her legs, spreading her thighs wide, and lowers his mouth to the core of her; her hands clench in the sheets, her head falling back, her eyes closed. She's already so close, and he hasn't told her she can—

"Eyes on me."

If she opens her eyes and looks at what he's doing, has an image to put to the sound and the feeling, the sensation of his scruff against her inner thigh and the wet sound of his tongue lapping at her, she will come undone. But she opens her eyes and looks, shaking, and she sees the flash of a grin before his tongue flicks out to touch her again.

"Please," she says, desperate, "please, can I—"

"Yeah." She can feel his mouth move against her, the muffled words pressed into her flesh. "Right now."

Two fingers press into her; his tongue begins to work again, and all the while he looks up at her, watching, as she falls back to the bed and tenses, her hips and legs quivering, until the orgasm rolls over her, drawn out by the movement of his mouth and hands.

After, there's no sound in the room but her own harsh breathing. Her eyes are open, but she only vaguely makes sense of what she sees: the familiar wooden slats of the ceiling, some touched by ivy, others cleared and recently repaired.

His fingers begin to pull out of her, but she blurts out, "No!"

The tension in the room pulls taut; his breathing stills against her inner thigh. She only knows that the idea of separating from him, even in this minute way, is intolerable in this moment, and that's why she said it, a word she has rarely, maybe _never_ , said to him before, always choked down—

"No?" he repeats. The curl of amusement in his voice crawls up her spine. "Are you forgetting who holds the leash, kadan?"

She still doesn't want him to stop touching her, but the word is like a touch in itself, reaching out like a rope to tie around her wrists, binding her to him. She likes it better than asaaranda, even better than her own name.

"You know the word," he says, "if you don't want to play."

"No." She swallows, closes her eyes. "I'm sorry, I—I made a mistake. I'll do better."

"Been a long day." This is entirely too forgiving, she thinks, for what was at worst twenty minutes of accelerating panic. "I can help you…refocus."

It gives her a little thrill of fear, that promise, but that's always added to the sensation for her; the sex she had before Bull seems flat and empty in comparison, mechanical, lacking dimension. A sprint to a shared goal and then immediate separation, nothing more.

"Thank you," she says. When he pulls his fingers from her body, she doesn't protest. She has his heart still, safe in the shelter of her ribs, beating.

"Sit up," he tells her, "and hands out."

She does as he says, offering her hands wrists-up, and keeps her eyes lowered and focused on the rope he ties around them and up her forearms, crossing back and forth over her bare skin. He creates a last little loop and pulls the remaining rope away, still attached to her wrists. She isn't watching her periphery closely, so it comes as a surprise to her when the rope tugs and pulls her a bit forward.

"I'll hang onto this," he says, "just so you don't forget again."

She's always thought there was something a little wrong with her, that the fantasy of ropes and blindfolds and orders given could turn her on so much more quickly than sweet words and gentle touches. But it warms her to the bone—a molten fire sinking to her core—and she is sure, now, that there is nothing at all wrong with it. He gives her what she needs, and she gives him what he needs, and they hurt no one else and love one another. She has second-guessed herself all her life, every decision, scrutinizing for corruption or possession, certain she could only be an inherently bad creature, striving for goodness at odds with her nature.

But not this. This much is right, and she doesn't question it.

He shifts to sit at the edge of the bed; she feels every minute movement of the rope, echoing into her binds. Once he's settled, he tugs at it more firmly. "Kneel on the floor, between my feet."

She has enough practice after months and months of this to move her body without the use of her hands and arms for balance, but it's still a clumsy motion. He helps, steadying her elbow as she stands from the bed and staying there to lower her to the ground. Her knees find a thin pillow, still better than a hard stone floor, and she kneels there with ease, thighs spread apart.

"I'm going to keep this taut," he says, winding his end of the rope around his hand and then leaning back against it; the tension is just enough to keep her hands pulled away from her body. "I'll feel it if you strain against it."

Nervously, she licks her lips. "So I shouldn't."

"I'll leave that to you to decide."

Despite the arousal already gathered, thrumming, at the apex of her thighs, she knows her usual resolve: it will take much of her concentration to keep from trying to touch herself, but she will just have to manage.

His free hand reaches down, tips her chin up just enough to make her look at his cock, only inches from her face. His fingers stroke her neck—her breath catches—and then they release her, wrap around his length instead, and squeeze. Her cunt throbs in sympathy.

"Suck."

She leans forward to take the head in her mouth, eager, and he moves his hand to cup the back of her head instead, not pushing or pulling but holding her still. She doesn't try to move; she licks, long and slow and light, every inch of him that she can reach, her lips firm but not tight around him. He breathes deeply, evenly, his fingers not even flexing around her skull, the tension of the rope around her wrists steady.

She doesn't pull. She doesn't forget her own arousal when she's pleasuring him, not exactly—in truth, it intensifies things for her, makes the ache more acute—but it is easier to push it off to the side, shut it away. Focus. She wants to be good for him. Her head is usually filled with so many terrifying, impossible things, but here it is only filled with one: obey.

He holds her head still but slides a little deeper into her mouth, slowly. She changes tactics, pressing her tongue to the underside of his cock and keeping her lips tight around him. He draws back and thrusts again, so slowly it's leisurely, and though her hands don't pull, she still imagines him filling her cunt with those motions instead.

"Wasn't sure you were ever going to say anything," he says, almost conversationally, and it startles her so much, this breaking of routine, that her head nearly jerks back against his hand. She doesn't budge, but it's a near thing. "Wasn't sure I wanted you to, either," he continues. "Keep still."

His hand moves from the back of her head to her neck, thumb stroking over the line of her jaw, no longer holding her in place. He thrusts, a little more deeply this time, and she opens wider for him, exhaling noisily through her nose.

"Kind of a departure from what I know," he says. "Freaked me out."

If her mouth wasn't full of him, she'd tease him for this, or try to. He probably knows that, and set out to make sure her lips were occupied when he sprung this on her.

"When I got my head out of my ass, I could tell it freaked you out, too." He pulls back, and she sucks at the head, her tongue laving over and over his taut skin. He lets out a heavy breath and thrusts shallowly against the wet warmth of her mouth. "Wanted to put your mind at ease, but I thought it was important for you to make that choice yourself. Even if you didn't end up choosing this. Me."

She has already said all she needs to say, and this is just for her to hear, to understand. She remembers that word as if from a great distance, through the scream of wind and pain, a double-beat like her own pulse. Kadan.

"Was pretty sure you'd just _say_ it, though, the way you do—all in a rush, your face all red. Probably after sex," he adds, like an afterthought.

Funny, that it never crossed her mind to just tell him outright. It didn't seem like enough, when she played out it that way in her own head, but there's something sweet in him imagining that she'd show him her heart the way lovers usually do, instead of with the cobbled-together product of legend and violence. She has to fight down a smile.

His hand slides into her hair and tugs; his cock slides from her mouth, and she pants for air, bringing in deep lungfuls of it. The conversation hasn't sidetracked her desire at all. Now that she's lost her focus, she can hardly stand the arousal beating in her clit, untouched by anything but air.

"Up," he says, tugging at the rope; she didn't realize it until this moment, but he's let it go slack, trusting her not to use the extra freedom. The same odd pride she feels every time she passes one of his tests pulls at her chest.

She rises from the floor, wincing at a few pins and needles in her legs and feet. The hand holding the rope tugs again to pull her against him. His face tips up, just slightly, to look at her; for once, she is a little bit above him. Because it is hard to keep looking at the floor, and because he hasn't told her not to—and because she can stand the punishment if he doesn't like it—she lets her eyes drift over and meet his.

He looks back at her, and maybe it's the slight angle of his eyebrow, like a challenge or an invitation or both, that causes her to say, "I did say _some_ things."

One corner of his mouth crooks in a smile; the hand not holding the rope settles low on her hip, fingers splayed over her skin, barely inches from where she wants him to touch her the most.

"You did," he agrees. "And your face _was_ red. Not as red as it is right now, though."

She doesn't have much of a response for that; it always feels almost like a failure to admit to him how desperate she is for a touch, for more, so she bites her tongue and stays quiet as long as she can bear.

The hand skims up, dipping into the curve of her waist, over her ribs, through the valley between her breasts, flattens against her breastbone. Her body gives the game away; there is no calming her racing heartbeat, pounding against his touch.

"Tell me what you want," he says.

He did this the very first time they ever slept together, wound her so tight she couldn't think and then asked her to give voice to desires she'd never spoken of. There was no talking during those flings in Ostwick, few and far between as they were, only hurried breathing and clutching hands, eyes shut tight.

It still makes her flush to say it, but she can; pleading embarrasses her, but she doesn't mind. On those rare nights when she sleeps alone, she flushes hot at the mere memory of it, and it isn't the heat of shame.

"Fuck me," she asks, begs, not looking away from his face. "Please. I need you to fuck me."

Every time, she desperately hopes he'll take this much and run with it. Another, secret part of her hopes he'll demand specifics. He does, sometimes.

His eye glints. His hand slides down, over her belly, until it cups the whole of her sex. She shudders against him. Not enough contact for any kind of relief, but the fact that it's there, holding her, so close—

"Seems like I'm already doing that," he says. The noise of her own frantic breathing is appalling to her. "Tell me exactly what you want."

Just for an instant, her eyes dart away from his, courage failing her, but when the words spill out of her throat they're as vulgar and specific as he likes; the flush on her face and all down her chest, darkening, doesn't matter. "I want you to fuck my cunt," she says, "with your cock. Please. I want—"

His hand tugs the rope and it pulls her down, just enough, for him to kiss her, open-mouthed and messy; the hand between her thighs withdraws and his arm wraps around her back instead. "Knees on the bed," he says, pulling back from her mouth, and she scrambles to obey, settling on her knees with her legs bracketing his. He shifts, pulling up on the rope, and she follows the tension until her arms rest on his shoulders, her hands bound behind his neck.

He reaches between them, adjusting the angle, and she feels the blunt head of him open her. "Slow," he orders.

Quivering, she sinks down until he is fully inside her, breathing shallowly. The rope pulled taut on her wrists goes slack; his arms fold around her, pulling her just tight enough against him to feel the curved surface of the dragon's tooth, his mouth already at work on her neck.

"You can move," he says, the brush of his lips against her skin eliciting a shiver.

She braces her arms against his shoulders and moves, as much as she can; he stays deep within her, not thrusting, letting her set the pace. She tries to keep her head, tries to focus, even as the pleasure of rocking against him, the slick slide of his cock inside her, threatens to swallow her whole. There's just enough pressure there, between their bodies, to relieve the throbbing of her aching clit. She rubs shamelessly against that spot, crying out when his teeth bite at the crook of her neck.

"You're dripping," he murmurs against her skin, and slips one hand between their joined bodies to touch her. There's not much room for his fingers to move, but she understands the invitation and grinds against them, moaning softly now. "What has you so wound up, hmm?"

She manages a laugh, nearly dizzy with the combined pleasure of his cock, stretching her wide, and the pads of his fingers, rubbing exactly where she needs them.

"You," she breathes. "Always you."

The fingers of his free hand flex against her back, his arm still tight as chain around her. "You can come," he says.

She grinds, harder, hips and thighs aching, against him, and decides—in the cooked, overheated depths of her mind—to take one more risk. Buck obedience, just by a little.

"There was just one thing," she pants, building, building, "that I didn't get to say, exactly the way I thought I would. You—ah—beat me to it. Said it a different way."

He picks up the thread of conversation as if it had never been dropped, doesn't rebuke her. "What was that?"

He pulls back just enough to meet her gaze. She keeps up the pace of her hips; she can't stop it now, and she's glad he's already given her permission. Her body sprints for that ledge, heart pumping, and she says, "I love you."

His fingers twitch—in reaction, or because he knows how close she is—and she tightens around him, crying out her release.

When she blinks the haze from her eyes, he's kissing her neck, her throat, her shoulder, slowly, languorously, the length of him still hard inside her. She tries to get her breath back, to start moving again despite the aching muscles in her hips and thighs, but he holds her still and chuckles against her skin. "Kadan," he says, and presses his mouth right to the spot where her heart beats hardest. "I'm not done with you yet."

 _I'll never be done with you,_ she thinks, half-delirious, and follows the hand pulling at the end of the ropes that bind her.


	8. Chapter 8

**August 9:42**

It's just about dusk, and Katrina's hitting a training dummy with her quarterstaff, when Bull emerges from the tavern.

She goes on smacking the dummy. She's gotten better at this; there were a few times in Emprise du Lion when she hit someone hard enough to kill them, no magic. On that long march through Suledin Keep, she'd constantly been in danger of running dry. Shuddering, she levels a blow at the dummy's torso, and the seam of its burlap sack splits open, stuffing falling to the ground.

"Nice one," Bull says appreciatively.

She pushes her hair back from her sweaty face—pieces have come free from her bun—and turns to face him, bracing the butt of the staff on the ground. "I think Cassandra softened that one up for me," she says, secretly pleased. "Something you wanted?"

He smirks, and it buoys something inside her. She leans on her staff, hip jutting out to one side; his eye follows the curve appreciatively.

"Yeah," he says, "but that can wait."

"Oh, I don't know about that," she begins, but then he holds his fist out to her and uncurls his fingers.

"I have something for you," he says, still smiling.

The half-tooth is a copy of his, but in miniature; it will slide easily beneath her shirt on the bright, delicate silver chain, intricate links gleaming in the setting sun.

"The rest of it's in your room," he says, unhooking the clasp. "Figured it'd make a good paper-weight."

She laughs and ducks her head; he fastens the chain around her neck and fiddles with it until the tooth hangs right against her shirt. She messes it up, of course, reaching up to touch it as soon as he pulls his hand away.

"Thank you, kadan," she says. His smile deepens a little at the endearment; she stands up on tiptoe to kiss him in the last, shivery light of the sun. He makes it a little easier on her neck, bending just enough to scoop her up off the ground. She laughs against his mouth, arms holding tight around his shoulders.

It's always something new with him—not always something as simple as this, a plain show of affection in the middle of the training yard, where every gaping recruit can see them, but even so, this might be one of her favorite new things. She has always clung so fearfully to the shadows; even in the snow of Skyhold, it feels warm to walk in the sun.

"So," she says, a little breathlessly, once he's put her down. "How about the other thing, now?"

He raises an eyebrow at her. "You know, if you're too impatient, it's going to be a while before you get what you want."

She considers the merits of sassing him. There are a whole myriad of things she wants, after all, each one with its own virtues, and some she can only get by misbehaving or asking _very_ nicely. In the end, though, she stays quiet, waiting.

He reaches out to take her hand. "There she is," he murmurs. "Come on."

They've only gone a few steps toward the keep, butchered training dummy forgotten, when a scout on the wall blows the horn. She stops dead, head turning. It's the sound for _allies_ , but followed by the pattern for _unknown_. She looks up at Bull; his head is tipped, too, listening.

"It's been more than two weeks since Krem's letter," she says. "Do you think—"

"The wall," he says, tugging at her hand, and they break into a jog to the closest stairs up to the battlements, two quick strikes of her feet for every one of his.

By the time they reach it, Cullen has already come out of his office to look down at the party standing at the gate. Hearing their footsteps, he glances back at them, manages to meet Katrina's eye for all of two seconds, and hurriedly looks out over the battlements again, faintly pink. War table meetings this week have been challenging, to say the least.

"It certainly looks like the Chargers," he says. "It concerns me that they didn't send word ahead, however, and we have no way of knowing who that is with them."

At this height, it's hard to make out any individuals in the group. She knows the Chargers, mostly by their armor and their horses and ponies, but the others—riding less well-cared for mounts, wearing drab and indistinguishable clothes—she doesn't know them. She searches desperately, head by head, for the ash-blond hair she'd recognize, but it's been a long ride, and they're all covered in a layer of dust and dirt, hoods pulled up against the mountain chill.

"Are they people?" Bull asks.

She focuses enough to get a grip on her magic and touch each of them as if they were a target, moving person to person. She can't get enough of a feel on any of them to identify them, but there are certainly no demons there.

"Yes," she says, not taking her eyes off the group. "No demons. It must be…"

Bull raises his voice. "Hey! Krem!"

A rider at the front of the group looks up, pulling his hood back.

"What's the hold up, Chief?" he calls back, voice bone-weary despite the volume.

"Paperwork," Bull says, leaning against the battlements. "Didn't know you were on your way back."

"Bird must have gotten lost," Krem replies.

"There _was_ a storm in the pass recently," Katrina points out, her voice low. "Bird could have died in that snow, honestly."

"Leliana has reported delays, as well," Cullen says; when he glances at her this time, he's no longer red in the face, but concerned. "We'll still need to treat them with caution."

"Of course," Katrina agrees, though impatience creeps into her voice.

Cullen signals to the men below to open the gate. It gives a lurch, a groan, and begins to pull up. Krem waves his thanks and leads the party in.

"Did you see her?" Bull asks.

"No, but it's been five years—and at this distance…"

He nods. "Come on."

They trot back down the many stairs as the party moves inside the gate. She's still tense despite her sense of them, waiting for a trick, a trap, one that is not full of demons but instead plain human evil, maybe; Bull feels much the same beside her, the hand that isn't holding hers on the grip of his axe. Krem gives a relieved groan and swings out of the saddle, and the rest of the Chargers follow suit with easy, familiar motions despite the long ride. The others, ten of them, climb down more gingerly and push their hoods back to reveal wary, worried faces.

Bull stops her at the very bottom of the stairs. A few scouts and some of Cullen's soldiers move among the new arrivals, searching. No one else in Skyhold takes notice at all. This is standard for unexpected arrivals, of which they have plenty.

"Look," a voice emerges from the group, and Katrina tenses at the sound of it, standing up on tiptoe to try and see, "I know you probably get this every day, but the Inquisitor invited us here, and I'd really like to see her, if it's all the same to you—"

A scout moves a bit aside, apparently satisfied with his check of this woman's saddlebags and person. "Nightingale says she's expecting you," he says, already going through the next person's things. "We'll send a runner as soon as we're done here—"

But at that moment, finally, Piper turns her head just enough for Katrina to recognize her: soot streaked through her short hair, bright brown eyes keen and searching, and she sees Katrina only a heartbeat after Katrina sees her.

Across the courtyard, they stare at one another through the bustle of moving people. Katrina registers, vaguely, that Bull has let her go, because nothing stops her when her feet move forward; Piper slips around the scout and through the horses and doesn't quite _run_ , because she probably knows better than to startle all these soldiers so, but she does walk very, very quickly.

There are too many thoughts, and Katrina can't make sense of a single one of them, so when they meet in the middle of the courtyard she only reaches out to hug Piper around the shoulders. As far as Katrina knows, Piper has never been without something quippy to say in her whole life, but right now, she doesn't say a single word; she wraps her arms around Katrina and holds on tight. She's thin, thinner than she's ever been, and she _stinks_ , like slush and dirt and smoke, and Katrina can practically feel the grit of a long five years rubbing off on her own clothes, but such a thing has never mattered less.

"You cut your hair," Katrina says, a little nonsensically, but her mind—overwhelmed by relief—has ground to a halt, and this really is the best she can do.

"You got a castle," Piper says, and laughs, pulling back just enough to peer into Katrina's face. Maybe she is five years older and wearier than the last time Katrina saw her, with scars and wrinkles to match, but her brown eyes are as lively, her grin as rakish, as ever. She reaches up to touch the scar over Katrina's brow.

"Are you alright?" Katrina asks. "I know the trip up the pass—"

"Wasn't fun, but it was what came before that held us up, really." A shadow passes over Piper's face, a bit of the light in her brown eyes dimming. "One of our people got hurt bad not long before your boys found us. What's his name—Stitches, isn't that peculiar—practically emptied that bag of his to stop the infection." She lowers her voice. "Sounds like they'll still have to take part of the leg off."

Over Piper's shoulder, Katrina sees who she must be talking about: a woman who can barely put weight on her left leg, supported on either side by an Inquisition soldier and Stitches, moving her carefully toward the infirmary.

"I'm sorry," Katrina says. "I should have—"

Piper shakes her head. "She'll live. That's enough."

There's a lot of pain in those four words, scabbed over but still hurting. Katrina is still trying to think of how to comfort her—what words can possibly ease that—when Piper glances down at the hand still on her shoulder.

"Huh," she says. "That's a rumor I didn't believe."

It's Katrina's left hand, the green glow of the anchor showing even through her gloves. She pulls her hands back. "Uh, yeah," she says, and even to a mage, even to her best friend, she struggles to come up with an adequate explanation. "It—it's—well, it closes rifts. That's why I'm…"

"The Herald," Piper says, and there's actually a bit of pride in her voice. "Inquisitor, Andraste's chosen, etcetera. Maker, look at you. A mage, running the whole damn rescue party."

She should have known, of course, that Piper would never laugh at her, not about this. A soldier brushes by with a murmured "Inquisitor," fist pressing briefly to his breastplate before he goes on his way, and she and Piper catch one another's eye and burst out laughing.

"Shit," Piper sighs when the mirth finally fades, wiping her eyes and gazing up at Skyhold's keep, "that is a _lot_ of mice, Kat."

Katrina chuckles—breathlessly, her ribs aching. "I want you to meet someone."

Piper leans close, lowering her voice. "Is it that qunari standing about ten feet back, watching me like he'll kill me if I make a wrong move?"

"Yes," Katrina says, smiling despite the flutter of nerves in her stomach, "that would be him." She turns just enough to beckon Bull forward, and he lumbers toward her, hand still on his axe.

"You know the company that came to get you," Katrina says, raising her voice a bit. "This is the Iron Bull, their Chief."

"And, if half the rumors leaking out of this place are to be believed, your _lover_." Piper clucks her tongue, craning her neck back to look up at Bull. She's shorter than Katrina. In five years, she'd actually forgotten.

"Well, yes," Katrina says. "I thought it seemed a little tawdry to introduce him like that, though." After half a beat, she asks, "What do the _other_ half of the rumors say?"

Piper smirks. "Wouldn't _you_ like to know." She offers her hand out to Bull. "The help was appreciated. I already tried to give your lieutenant what valuables we had, but he turned me down."

Bull takes her hand and shakes it, his absurdly large hand clasped around her rather small one, and Katrina feels, a little wildly, that this is what it would be like if she had a family to introduce a beau to. Mortifying, and exhilarating, and completely surreal.

"The Inquisition's coffers are deep enough to pay us," Bull says. "Sounds like you've had a hard road here. Wouldn't want to add to that."

"Could've been worse," Piper says. "Hey, I have someone I want you to meet, too." She raises her voice a little, turning back to the scrum in the courtyard. "Mira!"

A dwarven woman, good-looking despite the dirt she's covered in, tosses her saddlebag over her shoulder and moves toward them. There's a wicked-looking maul slung across her back and a black casteless brand on her brown cheek, and despite all the dirt, her shining black hair is carefully, dutifully braided and coiled at the base of her neck.

"Is this her?" she says cheerfully, stopping a couple feet back to look up at Katrina without straining her neck. "I've heard so much about you, I feel as if I know you already."

"My partner," Piper says, grinning, something a little sheepish in her face. "Met her about three months out of Kirkwall. She was planning to rob us blind, but she fell in love with me instead."

Mira snorts. "It's a long con, duster."

Katrina can't help the grin unfurling across her face, so broad it hurts. "It's so nice to meet you," she says, and gives Piper a sideways look for good measure.

Piper cocks an eyebrow at her in silent daring and interrupts before Katrina can go on. "So how did all…this…" She waves at the castle around them. "Come about?" Her eyes dart to Bull for good measure, but he's examining the maul on Mira's back, apparently uninterested.

Katrina's about to say that it's an awfully long story, but then she realizes—with a relief that very nearly buries her—that they have time. Maybe not all the time in the world, since the world may not have very much time left, after all, but more time than they've ever had. No Senior Enchanters to call lights-out, no templars to interrupt their traded words. Bull puts a hand on her shoulder, squeezes, and she smiles.

"Let's get you some dinner," she says, "and I'll tell you all about it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap! Thank you so, SO much for all your comments and kudos over these past couple of months; they have really meant the world to me, especially for this fic, which is really just me playing in my little corner of the Dragon Age sandbox with not one but _two_ OCs (and Bull, I suppose).


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